Todo Qa

It writes a consonant in Todo, a writing system used for Oirat.

Todo, meaning “clear,” was devised by Zaya Pandita in 1648 to make Mongolian writing clearer for Oirat-Kalmyk speech rather than literary Mongolian.

The older Mongolian script emerged around the beginning of the thirteenth century and derives from Old Uyghur writing, used from about the eighth to the fifteenth century. Todo adapts that tradition: it shares some letters with Hudum, the traditional Mongolian form, and has letters of its own. Manchu and Sibe are other adaptations in the same script family.

Why did Todo's history differ by region?

Different Oirat communities used and replaced it on different timelines.

Todo did not replace older Mongolian writing overnight: fragments with features from both scripts in the second half of the seventeenth century show a gradual transition.

In Kalmykia, Cyrillic and Latin orthographies displaced Todo from the mid-1920s. In Xinjiang, China, Todo entered Oirat education, media, and publishing in 1934. The Chinese government decided in the mid-1970s to replace it there with Hudum.

How do I type ᡍ?

Use a Todo-capable input method, or a Unicode escape in code.

An input method with Todo support enters the base letter. Mongolian text runs vertically, and its letters join; a font shapes this character according to its place in the word and vowel harmony, the pattern of vowels within that word.

In programming languages that accept Unicode escapes, \u184D represents this character. In ordinary prose, use a Todo-capable keyboard; if it looks wrong, check that the font and vertical text support are in place.