Todo Letter E

ᡄ is the Todo letter for the vowel e.

Todo, also called Clear Script, is a form of Mongolian script used for Oirat. This letter belongs within an Oirat spelling; seeing ᡄ points to the Todo tradition rather than the general traditional Mongolian set.

The Oirat Buddhist scholar Zaya Pandita devised Todo in 1648 from the older Mongolian script. Its aim was to reduce ambiguous letters and make written Oirat reflect spoken Oirat more closely, especially in its vowel system.

Why does Todo E change shape in a word?

The same letter takes a form suited to its position.

Mongolian text shaping gives Todo E isolated, initial, medial, and final forms. Mongolian Free Variation Selector One (᠋) can request a second medial form, so that text sequence includes both the letter and the selector.

Todo is written vertically in columns. If an app lacks vertical Mongolian layout, text may display horizontally or sideways; that is a layout limitation, not a different letter.

Where is Todo script still used?

Todo's use and written legacy vary by region.

Todo developed from traditional Mongolian, which descends from Old Uyghur. Manchu is an adaptation of Mongolian, and Sibe is based on Manchu. These are connected script histories, not alternate names for ᡄ. Todo was used for Buddhist translations, then for legal codes, documents, histories, and folk-religious writing.

A 2022 manuscript study describes a gradual transition, with Mongolian and Clear Script features coexisting in Oirat texts. It identifies a 1691 letter as the earliest dated Todo manuscript in its evidence and records Todo use among Oirats in Xinjiang. In Kalmykia, Cyrillic and Latin orthographies replaced Todo from the mid-1920s.