U+0BC8 "ை" Tamil Vowel Sign Ai Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
ை
U+0BC8 "ை" Tamil Vowel Sign Ai is a combining diacritical mark used in the Tamil script to represent the long vowel sound "ai," functioning as a dependent vowel sign that attaches to a preceding consonant character to modify its inherent vowel sound. This character is part of the Tamil block within Unicode and is employed in writing many common Tamil words, such as "மை" (mai, meaning ink) or "பை" (pai, meaning bag). It appears as a distinct combining mark placed before the consonant glyph, visually resembling two short strokes or a small loop above the character in typical Tamil typography.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+0BC8 |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Tamil Vowel Sign Ai |
| Block | Tamil |
| General Category | Spacing Mark |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ை |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ை |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE0 0xAF 0x88 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x0BC8 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x00000BC8 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u0bc8 |