What ఫ means
Say p, then release a clear puff of air.
Formal Telugu uses it chiefly in words from Sanskrit and Prakrit, older South Asian languages. Informal speech may merge it with plain p; English-influenced speech may use f. It suggests borrowing but cannot prove a word’s origin. Latin spellings include pha and ph.
Bhattiprolu inscriptions in Brahmi, an early Indian script, date from the 2nd–1st centuries BCE; they do not date this letter. Telugu inscriptions appear in the 6th–7th centuries CE. A record dated 575 CE, credited to the Renati Cholas, is the first entirely in Telugu; they used Telugu for royal proclamations. Telugu and Kannada shared a script tradition in the 4th–7th centuries CE, diverging between the 12th and 15th centuries.
Part of the collection
Who writes ఫ
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Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
1
Questions people ask
1Why does ఫ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
More like this
11
Collections with ఫ
2
How to type or find ఫ
- Also called
- pha · ph
- Search it as
- Telugu pha · pha vs pa · Telugu f · Telugu ph
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.