What 𝋅 means
𝋅 means five in units and 100 one place left. Base 20 makes each leftward place worth twenty times the last. The upper stroke marks one group of five; lower strokes mark extra units.
Why were Kaktovik numerals made?
Kaktovik students designed the system in 1994. Decimal digits did not show Iñupiaq’s base-20 count, so they made strokes to mark fives and leftover units.
A 1997 newsletter documented it. In 1998, Canada’s Inuit Circumpolar Council recommended it. Other Inuit and Yup’ik languages also count by twenties. In October 2022, educators used the numerals in immersion teaching and a local card game.
Part of the collection
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsFive.
Questions people ask
1Why does 𝋅 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.
More like this
9
How to type or find 𝋅
- Search it as
- inupiaq math · base-20 numbers · yupik numerals
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𝋅\1D2C5Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.