Mongolian Letter Todo Cha

It is one consonant letter in Todo.

Todo, also called Clear Script, is a writing system adapted from Mongolian for Oirat and Kalmyk. The letter's Latin-letter transliteration is “cha”; inside a word, it contributes a consonant, while the surrounding word supplies the reading and meaning.

Zaya Pandita adapted older Mongolian writing to reduce spelling ambiguity and reflect Oirat-Kalmyk speech more closely. The Mongolian script's own history reaches back to Old Uyghur writing. Manchu was adapted from it for another language, and Sibe later adapted Manchu writing. Todo also served Buddhist translation, including texts from Tibetan and Sanskrit; its name means “clear” in Mongolian. It was created for Oirat communities, including Kalmyk groups who had migrated to Russia in the sixteenth century.

Why does ᡒ change shape in a word?

The letters join and change form with their position in a word.

A font or text engine without Mongolian shaping support can show a fallback or a broken join. That changes the display, not the letter's identity.

In Kalmykia, Cyrillic and Latin orthographies replaced Todo from the mid-1920s. Oirat manuscripts kept it in religious use into the late-20th century, while literacy in western Mongolia declined.