U+08C4 "ࣄ" Arabic Letter African Qaf with Three Dots Above Unicode Character

Unicode Version 17.0

U+08C4 "ࣄ" Arabic Letter African Qaf with Three Dots Above is a specialized Arabic script character used in certain West African languages, such as Hausa, Fulfulde, and Songhay, to represent a distinct velar or uvular stop sound that differs from the standard Arabic qaf (ق). This letter extends the Arabic script to accommodate phonetic features unique to Sub-Saharan African languages, where the three dots above the base qaf shape indicate a modified pronunciation, often resembling a voiceless or ejective variant. It belongs to the Arabic Extended-B block and facilitates accurate orthographic representation in Islamic and scholarly texts across the Sahel region, helping to preserve linguistic diversity while maintaining the visual integrity of the Arabic writing system.

General Properties

Code Point U+08C4
Version Added 13.0
Name Arabic Letter African Qaf with Three Dots Above
Block Arabic Extended-A
General Category Other Letter
Canonical Combining Class Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class Arabic Letter

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding ࣄ
HTML Hex Encoding ࣄ
UTF-8 Encoding 0xE0 0xA3 0x84
UTF-16 Encoding 0x08C4
UTF-32 Encoding 0x000008C4
C/C++/Java Escape \u08c4

Unicode Properties

NFC Quick Check Yes
NFD Quick Check Yes
NFKC Quick Check Yes
NFKD Quick Check Yes
Numeric Type None
Numeric Value NaN
Joining Type Dual Joining
Joining Group African Qaf
Line Break Alphabetic
Script Arabic
Script Extensions Arabic
Indic Syllabic Category Other
ID Start Yes
XID Start Yes
ID Continue Yes
XID Continue Yes
Alphabetic Yes
Vertical Orientation Rotated
Grapheme Base Yes
Grapheme Cluster Break Other
Word Break Alphabetic letter
Sentence Break OLetter