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ኍ

ethiopic syllable xwe

Ethiopic Syllable Xwe

ኍ is an Ethiopic syllable sign. The script developed first for Geʽez and later served Amharic, Tigre, Oromo, and other languages. Its “XWE” chart label does not specify a particular language’s pronunciation.

Text symbol
Search it as
xwe · Ethiopic xwe · fidel · Geʽez writing
Shows up in
Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws

What ኍ means

It represents one syllable in Ethiopic writing.

The earliest writing evidence from Ethiopia and Eritrea is South Arabian-style consonant writing from the 8th/7th centuries BCE. An Ethiopian consonant script for Geʽez appears in the 1st–3rd centuries CE; by the 4th century it was an abugida, with signs that usually represent consonant-vowel syllables. Its South Arabian ancestry is documented.

Possible Indian influence has been proposed; another account treats the abugida as an independent innovation. Unicode’s “XWE” is a chart label, not a pronunciation guide for a particular language.

Don't confuse it with

4
ሀ
Ethiopic Syllable Ha
shares “ethiopic”, “syllable”
ሁ
Ethiopic Syllable Hu
shares “ethiopic”, “syllable”
ሂ
Ethiopic Syllable Hi
shares “ethiopic”, “syllable”
ሃ
Ethiopic Syllable Haa
shares “ethiopic”, “syllable”

Questions people ask

1

Why does ኍ show as a box on some devices?

Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.

How to type ኍ

Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 128D, then Alt+X to get ኍ.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “ethiopic syllable xwe”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 128d, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ኍ
CSS
\128D
Ethiopic keyboard
Ethiopic keyboard layouts map keystrokes to syllable positions, but Unicode does not standardize their codes; the exact keys depend on the layout installed on your device.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ኍ
HTML hex
ኍ
CSS content
content: "\128D";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E1%8A%8D
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes

A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.

Families this belongs to

1

African scripts2,275 symbols

ϢϣϤϥϦϧϨϩϪϫϬϭ