Javanese letter Tta

It writes Javanese retroflex tha, not dental ta.

The Javanese tha is usually written th in Latin spelling; say it with the tongue tip curled back. Plain dental t is made with the tongue against the upper teeth and written ꦠ. English th in thin is a poor guide. An unmarked ꦛ also carries an inherent vowel, so it forms a syllable rather than a bare consonant.

Javanese script developed from Kawi, an earlier script descended from Pallava writing. The earliest surviving Old Javanese inscription is the Sukabumi Charter, dated 804 CE. That date marks the written tradition, not the first appearance of this exact modern letterform. The script recorded local literary, religious, legal, and administrative writing.

How does Latin spelling vary across Javanese communities?

The sound stays distinct, but Latin spelling varies.

In Indonesian Javanese spelling, retroflex consonants are written th and dh; in Surinamese Javanese spelling, they are written t and d. The distinction can disappear when Surinamese Javanese is written in Latin letters.

Old and Middle Javanese literary writing continued in Bali and Lombok after the Majapahit period in Java. In the modern inventory, ꦜ is Tta Mahaprana, the separate counterpart to ordinary ꦛ.

Why does ꦛ sometimes render incorrectly?

Marks and joined letters need Javanese-aware shaping.

An unmarked base letter has an inherent vowel. Add a dependent vowel sign in Javanese order to change it. To suppress that vowel before another consonant, use pangkon ꧀ plus the following letter; this joined form is called pasangan. The sequence ꧀ꦛ uses two characters, not a separate precomposed letter.

Wrong order or incomplete font shaping can leave a dotted circle, detach a stacked sign, or split a conjunct across a line. Javanese fonts position connecting forms differently, so the same encoded sequence may look different across fonts. These are display or input issues, not alternate readings.