What ሦ means
It writes the “so” syllable in the ሠ series. In Amharic, ሦ is one vowel form of the ሠ sign. Modern speech can pronounce it like ሶ, but the established spelling of a word determines which series is written.
The region’s earliest written trail appears in consonant-only inscriptions known as pseudo-Sabaean, dated to the 8th/7th centuries BCE. Clearly defined Ethiopic writing appears in inscriptions from the 2nd/3rd centuries CE; its vowel forms develop by the 4th century.
The Ethiopic system first served Ge’ez, the language it was made to write. It grew from consonant-only signs into an abugida—a script in which consonant signs take different forms for vowels. ሦ is the o-order of ሠ. That series is historically descended from the Old South Arabian sign 𐩦; this is a script lineage, not a claim that the signs look alike.
How do I type ሦ?
Use an Ethiopic keyboard or input method. On the GFF/SIL mnemonic Amharic keyboard, type ss for the ሠ family, then o for ሦ.
It is a written syllable, not a tone marker; by itself, it gives no reliable clue to a sender’s mood.
If ሦ arrives alone, don’t infer a reaction from it; its word context is missing.
Part of the collection
Who writes ሦ
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Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
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Questions people ask
1Why does ሦ look different in another font?
It can. Ethiopic font rendering can show alternate glyph forms for the same syllable, changing its outline without changing the character.
More like this
12
Collections with ሦ
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How to type or find ሦ
- Also called
- szo · so
- Search it as
- fidel · ge'ez · amharic · ሦ ሶ
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ሦ\1226ss for the ሠ family, then o for its o-order form: ሦ.Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.