Mongolian Letter Ee

It marks a distinct vowel spelling for foreign words.

The traditional Mongolian script, called Hudum Mongol bichig in Mongolian, was adapted from the Old Uyghur alphabet, an earlier Central Asian writing system, around 1204 during Genghis Khan’s rule. By 1206, the Mongol administration needed it for records and bookkeeping. The Yisüngge stele, an inscribed stone monument dated 1224–1225, is generally treated as the earliest surviving example of the script.

The script remained in continuous use in Inner Mongolia and elsewhere in China. The country of Mongolia replaced it with Cyrillic in the early 1940s and revived it in the early 1990s. Related writing traditions include Todo, devised in 1648 for Oirat and Kalmyk communities; Manchu, adapted from Mongolian in 1599; and Sibe, based on Manchu.

Why does ᠧ change shape?

Its position in a word changes its joining form. A Mongolian font draws ᠧ differently when it stands alone or begins, continues, or ends a word; the encoded letter itself stays the same.

Traditional Mongolian script runs vertically, from top to bottom in columns that progress left to right. Software without vertical-layout support may put the same text in horizontal lines, so the difference is in the page layout, not the letter.