U+17A2 "អ" Khmer Letter Qa Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
អ
U+17A2 "អ" Khmer Letter Qa is a fundamental glyph in the Khmer script, representing the inherent vowel sound /ɑː/ that is used to form a wide range of syllables and words in the Khmer language. As the first consonant in the standard Khmer alphabet, it functions both as a standalone character and as a glottal stop or null initial consonant when combined with vowel diacritics, making it essential for writing words that begin with a vowel sound. Its visual form, a distinctive round shape often with a small loop, is deeply recognizable within Cambodian typography and plays a critical role in linguistic documentation and digital text representation across modern computing systems.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+17A2 |
| Version Added | 3.0 |
| Name | Khmer Letter Qa |
| Block | Khmer |
| General Category | Other Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | អ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | អ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE1 0x9E 0xA2 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x17A2 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x000017A2 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u17a2 |