Ethiopic Syllable Woa

It marks a Tigrinya syllable, read as part of a word.

The sign ዏ in Tigrinya (Tigrigna) spelling marks a syllable; “Woa” is its Latin transliteration label, and the surrounding word determines how to read it.

How did the Ethiopic writing system develop?

ዏ belongs to a syllable-based writing system that grew from Ge'ez.

Older Ge'ez-script inscriptions are reported from the eighth century BCE, while the first clearly defined Ethiopic script appears in inscriptions from the second/third centuries CE. Its ancestry is commonly linked to South Arabian writing, though the exact route is disputed. By the fourth century, the system had developed vowel distinctions, giving its consonant series different syllable forms.

Ethiopic writing began as a way to write Ge'ez and was later adapted for Amharic, Tigrinya, and Tigre. The W series starts with ወ, but its forms are not used identically across languages; ዏ is listed specifically for Tigrigna.