Mongolian Letter Ya

It represents Mongolian y. Traditional Mongolian is written vertically; ᠶ alone is still one letter.

Traditional Mongolian script was adapted from Old Uyghur around the beginning of the thirteenth century. In 1204, Chinggis Khan commissioned a Uyghur scribe to adapt it. Old Uyghur descended via Sogdian, a Central Asian script, from Aramaic. The Todo variant and Manchu writing later developed from Mongolian; Sibe writing adapted Manchu. As of 2025, traditional writing remained in use in Inner Mongolia. Mongolia replaced it with Cyrillic in the early 1940s and revived it in the early 1990s.

Why does ᠶ change shape in a word?

Its shape changes with its position in the word. Mongolian letters can take initial, middle, or final forms. Shaping software selects one; invisible ZWJ or ZWNJ controls can force a positional form.