U+1521 "ᔡ" Canadian Syllabics Shwa Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
ᔡ
U+1521 "ᔡ" Canadian Syllabics Shwa is a glyph used in the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics writing system, specifically representing the syllabic sound "shwa" (often pronounced like "sho" or "shwa") in languages such as Cree and Ojibwe. This character belongs to the Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics block, which was added to the Unicode Standard to support the diverse Indigenous languages of Canada. Its design follows the typical geometric, angular style of the script, which arranges characters by rotating or mirroring basic shapes to indicate different vowel values. The inclusion of U+1521 helps preserve and digitize the linguistic heritage of First Nations communities.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+1521 |
| Version Added | 3.0 |
| Name | Canadian Syllabics Shwa |
| Block | Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics |
| General Category | Other Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ᔡ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ᔡ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE1 0x94 0xA1 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x1521 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x00001521 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u1521 |
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 | Canadian Aboriginal |
| Script Extensions | Canadian Aboriginal |
| Indic Syllabic Category | Other |
| ID Start | Yes |
| XID Start | Yes |
| ID Continue | Yes |
| XID Continue | Yes |
| Alphabetic | Yes |
| Vertical Orientation | Upright |
| Grapheme Base | Yes |
| Grapheme Cluster Break | Other |
| Word Break | Alphabetic letter |
| Sentence Break | OLetter |