Yezidi Letter Phe

It marks an ejective p, released with a brief throat closure.

The apostrophe in p’ marks that release; it is sound notation, not punctuation in a Yezidi word. Modern spelling contrasts 𐺃 Phe with 𐺂 Pe, the plain p. In classical spelling, PHE could represent either the plain or ejective p, so older manuscripts do not always preserve today’s distinction.

Where did the Yezidi script come from?

Its history links religious manuscripts to a later Yezidi revival. Maṣḥafā Reš and Ktébī Jalwa were first published in 1911. Proposals place the script’s origin in the 12th–14th centuries or, in other scholarship, the 17th–19th centuries. Earlier works with those titles circulated in Arabic script, so 1911 is a publication date, not a proven invention date.

The books present different religious material: Maṣḥafā Reš gives a monologue by Tawûsê Melek, while Ktébī Jalwa describes a cosmogony, a story of how the world began. In 2013, the Spiritual Council of Yezidis in Georgia revived and modernized the alphabet for prayers, sacred books, organizational letterhead, and heraldry, adapting it to modern Yezidi Kurmanji sounds.

The older letter order follows Perso-Arabic practice. Comparison tables set Yezidi alongside Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic ways of writing Kurmanji. Some Arabic-origin words also retain Arabic reading marks.

What does 𐺃 mean when sent alone?

Alone, it is a letter sample, not a standalone reaction. Without surrounding Yezidi text, read it as a character sample or a request to identify the letter; context may explain why someone sent it.