Sogdian Combining Hook Below

It modifies the Sogdian letter before it; it has no standalone reading.

“Sogdian hook” and “hook below” are handy names for the mark. Sogdian combining marks can distinguish spellings or make a transcription explicit. Read this hook with the Sogdian letter immediately before it; the sequence carries the information, not the hook alone.

For a sense of the script’s history, Old Sogdian is documented from the third to sixth century CE; the later Sogdian script was used from the seventh to fourteenth century CE. It served religious and secular writing and also carried Chinese, Sanskrit, and Uyghur texts. Its cursive forms developed into Old Uyghur script, which later became a basis for Mongolian writing.

Why does the mark look detached or like a box?

A missing character usually makes a box; bad shaping can detach the mark.

In 2026, Noto Sans Sogdian documentation says the script needs software support for complex-text layout. A font without 𐽍 can show a box; software that mishandles combining placement can detach it or position it poorly. Fonts may draw the mark differently without changing which character it is.