Mongolian Letter Pa

ᠫ marks a p with extra breath in traditional Mongolian spelling, mostly in borrowed words. Its shape changes as it joins a word.

Text symbol

What ᠫ means

It marks a p with a clear puff of air.

Traditional Mongolian script was adapted from Old Uyghur around 1204 and served Mongol administration by 1206. A 2023 proposal instead places direct Mongol and Uyghur adoption of the ancient Central Asian Sogdian script in the 6th–7th centuries.

Yisüngge’s memorial stone (1224 or 1225) is the script’s oldest surviving specimen, not a date for ᠫ’s first use. Manchu leaders adapted the script; Buddhist and legal texts used it too. Inner Mongolia kept it through the 20th century; Mongolia switched to Cyrillic in the early 1940s and revived the script in the early 1990s. Todo and Sibe also adapted it.

Part of the collection

ᠠ

Mongolian Script Letters

Who writes ᠫ

Loading…

Don't confuse it with

ᠪ

Mongolian Letter Ba

ᠪ is the usual native p/b letter; ᠫ marks the breathy p, mainly in borrowed-word spellings.

Questions people ask

Why does ᠫ show as a box on some devices?

Not every system ships a font for the Mongolian block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.