fsymbols
🔍
Loading symbols…
››
ഃ

malayalam sign visarga

Malayalam sign visarga

4/118

Visargam marks a brief, unvoiced breath from the throat after a Malayalam syllable’s vowel. It preserves a Sanskrit-derived pronunciation in some spellings and can appear inside a word. When shown alone, a font may place it on a dotted-circle base.

Text symbol

What ഃ means

It marks a brief, unvoiced breath after the syllable’s vowel. Linguists call this a voiceless glottal fricative and write it as ḥ. It differs from the nasal sound marked by Malayalam anusvara, ം.

Malayalam visarga appears mainly in Sanskrit-derived spellings, preserving a pronunciation feature from those borrowed forms.

Malayalam script developed from Vattezhuthu, with Grantha forms added to write Indo-Aryan loanwords. Grantha included visarga in its Sanskrit repertoire; ancient Grantha is traced to Pallava inscriptions dated 300–650 CE.

Why does ഃ appear inside Malayalam words?

Malayalam keeps it in some Sanskrit-derived spellings inside words. Examples include ദുഃഖം, മനഃപ്രയാസം, and പുനഃസൃഷ്ടി. Here the sign marks pronunciation within a word, not a sentence break.

Why does ഃ look different when it appears alone?

A dotted circle may support it when it appears alone. Unicode rendering guidance allows the circle to act as the base for an isolated visarga. The circle is a display aid, not part of the spelling; fonts can position the sign differently beside Malayalam letters.

A Sanskrit-influenced spelling mark that signals pronunciation, not conversational mood.

Do not swap it with anusvara: visarga adds a brief throat breath; anusvara marks a nasal sound.

Part of the collection

മ
Malayalam Alphabets & Letters
Explore 123 more →

Who writes ഃ

Loading…

Don't confuse it with

3
ം
Malayalam Sign Anusvara
Malayalam visarga vs anusvara: ം marks a nasal sound; ഃ marks a brief breath from the throat.
:
Colon
An ASCII colon is punctuation, not a Malayalam visarga.
ः
Devanagari Sign Visarga
This is the Devanagari visarga; it belongs to that script, not Malayalam spelling.

Questions people ask

1

Why does Malayalam visarga show a dotted circle?

The circle is a display base for the sign when it appears alone; it is not part of the Malayalam spelling.

How to type or find ഃ

Also called
visargam · visarga
Search it as
ḥ · duḥkham · colon · anusvara
Shows up in
Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Windows (Word)
⎇Alt+XType 0D03, then AltX to get ഃ.
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 “malayalam sign visarga”.
Linux
⎈Ctrl+⇧Shift+UType 0d03, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ഃ
CSS
\0D03
Malayalam input
How to type Malayalam visarga: select it in a Malayalam input method; the keystroke depends on your layout.
Text sequence
End the syllable with it; formal Malayalam syllable grammar allows no following vowel sign, virama, or anusvara.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ഃ
HTML hex
ഃ
CSS content
content: "\0D03";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E0%B4%83
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

Indian scripts3,440 symbols

ऀँंःऄअआइईउऊऋ