Ə

This article is about the Latin-derived letter. For the vowel represented by ə in IPA, see Mid-central vowel. For the Cyrillic letter, see Schwa (Cyrillic).
"Ǝ" redirects here. For the Eminem video collection, see E (video). For the existential quantification symbol, see ∃.
Ə ə
Ə ə
Ǝ ǝ
Ǝ ǝ

Turned E, Ə ə in Azeri and Ǝ ǝ in African languages, is an additional letter of the Latin alphabet. In Azeri, both the majuscule and minuscule forms of this letter are based on the rotated form of a minuscule e; in African languages using the Pan-Nigerian Alphabet or the African reference alphabet, the minuscule is based on a rotated e and the capital form majuscule Ǝ, based on a horizontally flipped majuscule E.

In Azeri, the letter can look like Эə in handwritten form.[1][2] The letter was used in the Uniform Turkic Alphabet, for example, in Janalif for the Tatar language in the 1920s-1930s. In the Latin Azerbaijani and Chechen alphabets, Ə represents the near-open front unrounded vowel, /æ/.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, minuscule ə is used to represent the mid central vowel or a schwa. Also, in a romanization of Pashto, the letter Ə is used to represent [ə].

In the Latin transliteration of Avestan, the corresponding long vowel is written as schwa-macron, Ə̄/ə̄.

Unicode encodings

Character Ə ə Ǝ ǝ
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SCHWA LATIN SMALL LETTER SCHWA LATIN CAPITAL LETTER REVERSED E LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED E
Encodings decimal hex decimal hex decimal hex decimal hex
Unicode 399 U+018F 601 U+0259 398 U+018E 477 U+01DD
UTF-8 198 143 C6 8F 201 153 C9 99 198 142 C6 8E 199 157 C7 9D
Numeric character reference Ə Ə ə ə Ǝ Ǝ ǝ ǝ

Not to be confused with U+2203 ∃ there exists (HTML ∃ · ∃ · as a mathematical symbol). When using ə in Unicode, the Azerbaijani language has problems with the ISO/IEC Turkish encoding, so sometimes ä has been used instead, as in the Tatar language and Turkmen language.

In Windows, the uppercase "Ə" can be generated by holding the Alt key and pressing 399 on the number pad, and the lowercase "ə" with Alt + 601. With the GNOME desktop environment, it is by default generated by Compose + e + e.

In MacOS with the U.S. Extended keyboard, the letters Ə ə Ǝ ǝ are made with Option-Shift-: followed by A a E e respectively.

References

  1. ↑ ИЗ ИСТОРИИ ПИСЬМА АЗЕРБАЙДЖАНСКИХ ТЮРКОВ, Мансур Рахбари (Южный Азербайджан, Иран), Bextiyartuncay. Э(ə) harfi için örnek - "э(ə)СРи : леорард ( Китаб аль – Идрак ли – Лисан аль – Атрак ), тигр (Махмуд Кашгари)"
  2. ↑ Eesti Keele Instituut / Institute of the Estonian Language KNAB: Kohanimeandmebaas / Place Names Database, Taadi / Tat / Жугьури Džuhuri latinisatsioon / romanization: KNAB 2012-09-30 - Notes-2: "In the earlier Azerbaijani Cyrillic there were variations: ə (= э)."

See also

Look up ə in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.