U+12DB "ዛ" Ethiopic Syllable Zaa Unicode Character

Unicode Version 17.0

U+12DB "ዛ" Ethiopic Syllable Zaa is a symbol from the Ethiopic script used for writing languages such as Amharic, Tigrinya, and Ge'ez, where it represents the syllable pronounced "zaa" with a long vowel sound. This character is part of the Ethiopic Syllabary block, which is a writing system that originated in the ancient Kingdom of Aksum for the Ge'ez language and later adapted for modern Semitic languages in the Horn of Africa. The glyph is composed of a base consonant character modified by a diacritic or a specific shape change to indicate the vowel "aa," following the syllabic structure typical of the script. As a historic and living script element, U+12DB is essential for accurately spelling words and preserving linguistic tradition in digital text encoding standards like Unicode 3.0 and later versions.

General Properties

Code Point U+12DB
Version Added 3.0
Name Ethiopic Syllable Zaa
Block Ethiopic
General Category Other Letter
Canonical Combining Class Not Reordered
Bidirectional Class Left To Right

Encodings

HTML Decimal Encoding ዛ
HTML Hex Encoding ዛ
UTF-8 Encoding 0xE1 0x8B 0x9B
UTF-16 Encoding 0x12DB
UTF-32 Encoding 0x000012DB
C/C++/Java Escape \u12db

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