What ะ means
It marks short a or completes another short-vowel spelling. This Thai short-a sign works with a consonant rather than as a standalone word. In phonetic notation, /a/ means its vowel sound. Spellings such as เกาะ and แกะ use ะ with other vowel elements to represent different sounds.
Its history belongs to the development of Thai writing
Thai's Sukhothai script was adapted from Old Khmer writing, within the family descended from the ancient Indian Brahmi script. Sukhothai Inscription 1, a stone inscription, bears the date 1292 CE; that dates an early Thai text, not the invention of ะ.
A double-circle form of sara a is documented by around 1392 CE. An inscription from that date also adds the sign to a spelling previously written without it. This shows a change in how the short vowel was written, rather than a new symbolic meaning.
How do I type ะ?
Enable Thai Kedmanee and press unshifted T. Kedmanee is a Thai keyboard layout; use the key at the QWERTY T position. Other layouts have different arrangements.
Type ก first, then ะ, to make กะ. Fonts can change the loops' proportions without changing the character.
Part of the collection
Who writes ะ
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Don't confuse it with
2
Alphabet
Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
1Why does ะ 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
10
Collections with ะ
4
How to type or find ะ
- Search it as
- อะ · สระอะ · Thai short a · sara-a
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ะ\0E30Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.