Mongolian Letter Fa

It writes the f sound, mainly in borrowed words and names. In traditional Mongolian, ᠹ fills a gap in inherited vocabulary. It is a spelling letter used inside words, not a word on its own.

The script's history is older than the story of this particular sound. The standard account dates traditional Mongolian writing to around the beginning of the 13th century and traces it through Old Uyghur writing to the Sogdian script, itself descended from Aramaic. A competing hypothesis places Mongol and Uyghur adoption of Sogdian around the 6th–7th centuries. The Genghis Stele, an inscribed stone, is the earliest surviving Mongolian-script text, around 1225.

How is ᠹ connected to other scripts?

ᠹ belongs to traditional Mongolian, one branch of a shared script tradition. Todo was adapted for Oirat Mongolian; Manchu was adapted for Manchu, a language in the Tungusic family; and Sibe developed from Manchu. These branches share some letters but also have distinct ones. Their wider repertoire includes special letters for transcribing Tibetan and Sanskrit in Buddhist texts.

Traditional writing later followed different paths in different places. Cyrillic replaced it in Mongolia in the early 1940s, while traditional writing continued in use in Inner Mongolia. Readers in these places therefore encounter the script through different local writing histories.

How do I type ᠹ?

Use a traditional Mongolian keyboard or input method. Choose one set up for Mongolian script and let it enter ᠹ in the word rather than assembling a drawn form.

Why does ᠹ change shape? Traditional Mongolian text runs vertically, and letters take separate shapes when alone or joined at the start, middle, or end of a word. The font and shaping system choose the form. An invisible Mongolian free variation selector, a control character that guides letter shape, may be needed when a foreign-word form cannot be inferred. If the display looks wrong, check the font and text shaping first.