Zanabazar Square Vowel Length Mark

It lengthens the vowel in a Zanabazar Square syllable.

After a consonant, it lengthens that syllable’s inherent a, producing ā; after a vowel sign, it lengthens the sign’s vowel, such as i to ī or o to ō. Its phonetic job is the same in Mongolian, Sanskrit, and Tibetan text.

The mark belongs to Zanabazar Square, a horizontal script modeled on Tibetan writing for Mongolian, Sanskrit, and Tibetan. The script arose in a late 17th-century experiment attributed to Zanabazar and was rediscovered in 1801. Its layout may have helped make parallel texts practical. As of 2026, the known corpus remains small; surviving examples include manuscripts, blockprints, inscriptions, and seals. At the mark level, it is related to the Tibetan a-chung sign; at the script level, Zanabazar Square follows Tibetan and Brahmi-derived models, shares traits with Phags-pa, and likely predates Soyombo.

Why can 𑨊 render incorrectly?

Its order and the font’s shaping both matter.

Place it after the consonant or vowel sign it modifies. Alone, it has no vowel to lengthen, so the sequence is incomplete.

A 2018 Unicode implementation report notes that the vowel sign and length mark do not automatically reorder into one standard sequence; a font may therefore shape sequences in different orders differently. A font with Zanabazar Square shaping support can render the cluster correctly.