U+1242 "ቂ" Ethiopic Syllable Qi Unicode Character

Unicode Version 17.0

U+1242 "ቂ" Ethiopic Syllable Qi is part of the Ethiopic block used for writing the Ge'ez, Amharic, Tigrinya, and other languages of the Horn of Africa, representing a syllable pronounced "qi" with a glottalized or ejective quality. This glyph is derived from the base consonant character for "q" (ቀ) modified by a diacritic to denote the vowel "i" sound. In the Ge'ez script, it functions as an abugida where each character inherently includes a vowel, and U+1242 specifically indicates the second vowel order. Historically, the script continues to be used in liturgical contexts for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and in modern Amharic, the syllable "ቂ" appears in everyday words such as ቅዳሜ (qidame, meaning Saturday) and ቅርጫዊ (qirchawi, meaning plastic).

General Properties

Code Point U+1242
Version Added 3.0
Name Ethiopic Syllable Qi
Block Ethiopic
General Category Other Letter
Canonical Combining Class Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class Left To Right

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding ቂ
HTML Hex Encoding ቂ
UTF-8 Encoding 0xE1 0x89 0x82
UTF-16 Encoding 0x1242
UTF-32 Encoding 0x00001242
C/C++/Java Escape \u1242

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