Myanmar Vowel Sign E

It marks an e vowel together with a base letter. A base can be a consonant such as က. The rest of the spelling determines tone and any final sound.

This spelling system evolved from Indian script traditions, where consonants carry a default vowel that vowel signs can change. The Myazedi inscription, a stone text in four languages from around 1112 CE, is an early example of written Burmese. Old Burmese used a spelling transliterated as iy in Latin letters for the e vowel; the spelling tradition changed over time.

Why is ေ before the consonant?

Its displayed position differs from its stored position. This is a prebase e: “prebase” means it is drawn to the left of its base. In Unicode text, the base comes first in the character sequence; the font and text-rendering software place the mark on the left.

How do I type ေ?

Use a Unicode Burmese keyboard with an e-vowel key. The physical key depends on your layout.

Some layouts accept the vowel before the consonant and reorder it for you. If pasted text breaks, check whether it is Zawgyi, an older non-Unicode system for storing Myanmar text, rather than assuming the font is the problem.