U+1280 "ኀ" Ethiopic Syllable Xa Unicode Character

Unicode Version 17.0

U+1280 "ኀ" Ethiopic Syllable Xa is a character from the Ethiopic script, which is used to write several languages in the Horn of Africa, most notably Amharic, Tigrinya, and Ge'ez. It represents a specific syllable pronounced as "xa" and belongs to a larger family of syllabic characters that are formed by modifying a base consonant with a vowel diacritic. Historically, this character is part of the Ge'ez abugida, an ancient script that traces its roots back to the 5th century BC and was originally developed for the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. In modern usage, the syllable "ኀ" appears in writing systems for contemporary Ethiopian and Eritrean languages, though its frequency varies depending on the specific language and phonetic inventory.

General Properties

Code Point U+1280
Version Added 3.0
Name Ethiopic Syllable Xa
Block Ethiopic
General Category Other Letter
Canonical Combining Class Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class Left To Right

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding ኀ
HTML Hex Encoding ኀ
UTF-8 Encoding 0xE1 0x8A 0x80
UTF-16 Encoding 0x1280
UTF-32 Encoding 0x00001280
C/C++/Java Escape \u1280

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