Modifier Letter Georgian Nar

It marks a nasal vowel, not an extra spoken n. In Batsbi (also called Tsova-Tush), a Caucasian language written with an adapted Georgian alphabet, ჼ follows the vowel it changes. You pronounce that vowel with air flowing through the nose. In one documented pattern, a word-final n nasalizes the vowel before it and then disappears. For example, ა followed by ჼ forms აჼ.

Where does ჼ come from?

Its written history runs through Caucasian-language transcription. A catalogue dates Schiefner’s grammar of Tsova-Tush (Batsbi) to 1856; a later academic description dates its publication to 1859. Neither establishes that this exact glyph appears in that book. A 1999 Unicode proposal calls the raised Georgian n widely used in Caucasian linguistic transcription and reproduces a 1977 example from a Nakh language of the Caucasus.

Batsbi uses an adapted Georgian alphabet. ჼ is modeled as an approximate superscript of the Georgian letter ნ (nar), the full-size consonant n. That link explains its raised, n-like shape; in Batsbi, it marks vowel nasalization.

The same Caucasian transcription tradition also uses superscript Latin ⁿ and a Cyrillic modifier for the same nasal sound. As of 2026, ჼ remains outside ordinary Georgian spelling and appears in specialist writing for other languages that use Georgian letters.