U+12A3 "ኣ" Ethiopic Syllable Glottal Aa Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
ኣ
U+12A3 "ኣ" Ethiopic Syllable Glottal Aa is a symbol from the Ethiopic script used primarily for writing the Ge'ez language and modern languages like Amharic and Tigrinya. This character represents a syllable combining a glottal stop with a long "a" vowel sound, known as the glottal Aa, and is part of a larger syllabary system where each consonant base combines with vowel modifications to form distinct glyphs. In the Ge'ez abugida, U+12A3 is classified in the first order of vowels, and it is encoded in the Unicode Standard to support digital text processing and display for the Horn of Africa languages that rely on this ancient and influential writing system.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+12A3 |
| Version Added | 3.0 |
| Name | Ethiopic Syllable Glottal Aa |
| Block | Ethiopic |
| General Category | Other Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ኣ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ኣ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE1 0x8A 0xA3 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x12A3 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x000012A3 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u12a3 |