What ꔘ means
It represents one syllable in Vai writing.
“Zee” is the syllable’s Latin-letter label, not an English translation. Vai writing has no spaces between words, so the signs around ꔘ help readers parse the word.
The Vai syllabary developed in Liberia in the early 1830s, chiefly through the work of Mọmọlu Duwalu Bukẹlẹ, to write the Vai language. Its earliest known sample dates to 1834; the Book of Ndole survives from around 1845. Vai records served correspondence, record-keeping, and trade. Writers simplified forms over time, and a standardization effort took place in 1962. Whether Vai drew on the Cherokee syllabary in North America remains debated. Vai later influenced the Mende, Loma, and Kpelle writing systems.
What if someone sends ꔘ alone?
Ask what Vai word or passage it belongs to.
Someone who reads Vai may recognize the syllable, but a reader unfamiliar with Vai cannot infer a translation from this sign alone. It may be a text fragment or a script example; the sender can tell you which.
At home in Vai writing or script discussion; outside that context, it reads as specialist text.
“Zee” labels the syllable; it is not an English word to read as the message.
Part of the collection
Who writes ꔘ
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What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readingsOne syllable sign; nearby signs help a Vai reader identify the word.
Questions people ask
1Why does ꔘ appear as a box?
Your font may lack Vai coverage. Choose a font that includes Vai glyphs; the character stays the same, while a lookalike would change the text.
More like this
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How to type or find ꔘ
- Search it as
- Vai character · Vai syllabary · Vai script · zee syllable · five bars · vai zee · five strokes · five rectangles · dice five
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ꔘ\A518Why is ꔘ a box on my screen?
fsymbols draws rare signs with its own fonts, so they show here even where your device has none. An app or website without such a font shows an empty box (□) or a question mark instead. Turn our fonts off to see each sign as your device draws it by itself: a box here means a box in your chats and documents too.
Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.