Ethiopic syllable vu

On the GFF phonetic Amharic layout, type V then U.

That layout maps the Latin keys V and U to ቩ; other keyboards may differ. A Ge'ez-only layout may omit it because it includes only letters used for Ge'ez. An Amharic, Tigrinya, or Unicode Ethiopic layout may include it.

What sound does ቩ represent?

It writes “vu,” the u-form in the Ethiopic v series.

In Ethiopic writing, each consonant has a series of forms paired with different vowels. ቩ is listed for Amharic, Tigre, and Tigrinya.

The script is historically related to Epigraphic South Arabian, a writing system known from inscriptions in southern Arabia. The recognizable Ethiopic system with vowel-marked forms developed from earlier consonant writing in the 3rd and 4th centuries; it first served Ge'ez and was later adapted for Amharic and Tigrinya. Since the v sound is not native to these Ethiosemitic languages, ቨ, the base form of the v series, was probably added by Catholic missionaries in the 17th century to write Portuguese loanwords. ቩ is its u-form.