Mongolian letter Todo da

It is the Todo da letter.

Todo bichig, or Clear Script, is used to write Oirat and Kalmyk. Alone, ᡑ is only one part of a spelling; the surrounding letters complete the word.

Why was Todo called Clear Script?

Oirat monk and scholar Zaya Pandita devised it in 1648. The name Todo means “clear” in Mongolian; the reform modified older Mongolian writing to reduce ambiguity and represent Oirat-Kalmyk varieties more clearly.

The written language also retained features of 17th-century literary Mongolian, so it was not a simple sound-by-sound record of everyday Oirat. Todo carried translations of Tibetan Buddhist texts and works on medicine, astronomy, history, and literature. The earliest dated surviving Todo manuscript is a letter from 1691.

Kalmykia began replacing Todo with Cyrillic and Latin scripts in the mid-1920s. Oirats in Xinjiang still write it as of 2026.

Why does ᡑ look different in words?

Its shape changes with word position, and layout can vary by app. Todo text normally runs top to bottom in columns read from left to right. Letters join and may take different forms by position, so this isolated character does not show every in-word shape.

Mongolian writing emerged around the early 13th century from Old Uyghur, itself adapted from Sogdian Aramaic. Manchu writing was separately adapted from Mongolian in 1599, and Sibe developed from Manchu. These scripts share history but are distinct.