U+078E "ގ" Thaana Letter Gaafu Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
ގ
U+078E "ގ" Thaana Letter Gaafu is the twenty-first letter of the Thaana script, which is used to write the Dhivehi language of the Maldives. It represents the voiced velar stop sound /ɡ/, similar to the English "g" in "go". This character is derived from the Arabic numeral four "٤" as part of the Thaana script's unique system where letters were originally based on numerals before standardizing the writing direction. In its primary usage, the letter Gaafu is written as a consonant with an inherent vowel /a/ unless modified by a diacritic mark, and it plays a key role in forming common Dhivehi words such as "ގަފު" meaning "hand".
General Properties
| Code Point | U+078E |
| Version Added | 3.0 |
| Name | Thaana Letter Gaafu |
| Block | Thaana |
| General Category | Other Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Arabic Letter |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ގ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ގ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xDE 0x8E |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x078E |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x0000078E |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u078e |