U+121B "ማ" Ethiopic Syllable Maa Unicode Character

Unicode Version 17.0

U+121B "ማ" Ethiopic Syllable Maa is a symbol within the Ethiopic script block, representing the sound "maa" used in the Geʽez language and modern languages like Amharic and Tigrinya. It is derived from the base consonant "ም" (me) combined with the vowel diacritic for "a," forming a distinct syllable in the abugida writing system. This character is part of a rich typographic tradition used for liturgical texts and everyday communication in the Horn of Africa, and it is encoded in Unicode to ensure digital representation and interoperability across devices and platforms.

General Properties

Code Point U+121B
Version Added 3.0
Name Ethiopic Syllable Maa
Block Ethiopic
General Category Other Letter
Canonical Combining Class Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class Left To Right

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding ማ
HTML Hex Encoding ማ
UTF-8 Encoding 0xE1 0x88 0x9B
UTF-16 Encoding 0x121B
UTF-32 Encoding 0x0000121B
C/C++/Java Escape \u121b

Unicode Properties

NFC Quick Check Yes
NFD Quick Check Yes
NFKC Quick Check Yes
NFKD Quick Check Yes
Numeric Type None
Numeric Value NaN
Line Break Alphabetic
Script Ethiopic
Script Extensions Ethiopic
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