U+12D3 "ዓ" Ethiopic Syllable Pharyngeal Aa Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
ዓ
U+12D3 "ዓ" Ethiopic Syllable Pharyngeal Aa is a symbol from the Ge'ez script, used historically for the liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox traditions, and is also employed in modern languages such as Amharic and Tigrinya. This specific character represents a syllable combining a pharyngeal consonant sound with the vowel "aa", distinguished by its back-of-the-throat articulation absent in standard English. In the Ethiopic syllabary, "ዓ" corresponds to the first order of the pharyngeal series and is visually unique with its rounded, looped form, serving as a critical component for writing words that require this distinct phonetic quality.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+12D3 |
| Version Added | 3.0 |
| Name | Ethiopic Syllable Pharyngeal Aa |
| Block | Ethiopic |
| General Category | Other Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ዓ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ዓ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE1 0x8B 0x93 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x12D3 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x000012D3 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u12d3 |