Mongolian Letter Qa

ᠬ is the consonant letter qa in traditional Mongolian writing. Mongolian words usually keep vowels in one of two sound groups, produced with the tongue toward the back or front of the mouth; this pattern is called vowel harmony. The masculine or feminine vowel class selects a matching QA form, and the two forms have different pronunciations.

Why does ᠬ change shape in words?

Word position and vowel class determine its displayed form. Traditional Mongolian runs top to bottom in columns, and its letters usually join within a word. QA has an isolate form (alone) and initial, medial, and final forms for positions in a word; these are display shapes of the same letter, not separate characters. In some combinations, QA joins a following vowel into a ligature, a single joined shape.

A shaping-capable font usually selects the form from context. A Mongolian free variation selector is an invisible character placed after a letter to request a form that context cannot determine; ordinary running text rarely needs one.

Where did Mongolian QA come from?

Its script was adapted from Old Uyghur writing. In 1204, Chinggis Khan assigned a Uyghur retainer to adapt that writing system for Mongolian. A 1240 edict of Töregene—an official order—is recorded in Uyghur script.

The script’s lineage runs from Sogdian cursive, a joined handwriting style, through Old Uyghur into Mongolian. Traditional writing continued in Inner Mongolia and elsewhere in China; in Mongolia, a Cyrillic-based spelling system replaced it in the early 1940s, and traditional writing was revived there in the early 1990s.