U+125C "ቜ" Ethiopic Syllable Qhwee Unicode Character

U+125C "ቜ" Ethiopic Syllable Qhwee is a glyph within the Geʽez script block, representing a specific syllable used in the Ethiopian and Eritrean Semitic languages like Amharic and Tigrinya. It denotes the sound "qhwee," a labiovelar consonant produced from the ejective velar or uvular series, and is formed by combining the base consonant "Qha" with the vowel diacritic for "wee." This character is part of a broader set of syllabic symbols that accommodate the phonetic distinctions of the Ethiopic writing system, which encodes consonants modified by attached vowel marks rather than standalone letter. As a result, "ቜ" plays a role in accurately transcribing the complex sound inventory of these languages, particularly in words containing the rounded velar ejective phoneme.

General Properties

Code Point	U+125C
Version Added	3.0
Name	Ethiopic Syllable Qhwee
Block	Ethiopic
General Category	Other Letter
Canonical Combining Class	Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class	Left To Right

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding	ቜ
HTML Hex Encoding	ቜ
UTF-8 Encoding	0xE1 0x89 0x9C
UTF-16 Encoding	0x125C
UTF-32 Encoding	0x0000125C
C/C++/Java Escape	\u125c

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