What ꓪ means
It writes Lisu’s w consonant inside a syllable.
The letter’s name is wa; its sound is a brief glide made with rounded lips as the mouth moves into the next vowel.
In the Lisu alphabet, it can follow another consonant at the start of a syllable. The following vowel and tone mark complete the spelling.
How did the Fraser script develop?
The Fraser script grew from a shared effort to write Lisu.
Its recognisable ancestor took shape between 1908 and 1914. Sara Ba Thaw, a Karen evangelist, adapted Latin letter forms; James O. Fraser and Lisu pastors revised them. The script served Christian literacy through Bible translations, hymnbooks, primers, and readers.
In China, it later served schools, administration, publishing, media, and government. It became the government standard in two Chinese areas with Lisu autonomy in 1983; China recognized it as an official Lisu script in 1992. Old Lisu uses a single case. The script also wrote the Zaiwa language; the Lisu syllabary (one sign per syllable), New Lisu, and Advanced Lisu are separate writing systems.
How do I type ꓪ?
Use a Lisu keyboard layout or your system’s Unicode entry.
On a documented Linux Lisu layout, ꓪ occupies the visual QWERTY W position. Other layouts may differ.
With Unicode entry, enter UA4EA. If the font lacks Lisu coverage, the text may show a square or fallback shape; that display issue does not change the character.
Its presence signals Lisu or Fraser-script writing, or discussion of that writing system.
ꓪ and Latin W are different letters; use each in its own spelling.
Part of the collection
Who writes ꓪ
Loading…
Don't confuse it with
1
Combination ideas
2Questions people ask
1Why does ꓪ show as a square?
The font lacks a Lisu glyph, so the app substitutes a box or fallback shape. The underlying text character is still ꓪ.
More like this
9
How to type or find ꓪ
- Search it as
- Lisu alphabet · Fraser script · Old Lisu · Lisu wa · Lisu letter w
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ꓪ\A4EACodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.