Schwa (Cyrillic)

Schwa (Ә ә; italics: Ә ә) is a letter of the Cyrillic script, derived from the Latin letter schwa. It is currently^{[as of?]} used in Abkhaz, Bashkir, Dungan, Itelmen, Kalmyk, Kazakh, Khanty, Kurdish, Uyghur and Tatar. It was also used in Azeri (still used by Azeri speakers in Dagestan), Karakalpak, and Turkmen before those languages switched to the Latin alphabet. The Azeri and some other Latin-derived alphabets contain a letter of identical appearance (Ə/ə).

schwa
Usage
Writing system	Cyrillic
Type	Alphabetic
Sound values	[æ] [ɤ] [ə] [ɛ~a] [◌ʷ]
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Usage

In many Turkic languages such as Azeri, Bashkir, Kazakh, Uyghur and Tatar, as well as the Kalmyk and Khinalug languages, it represents the near-open front unrounded vowel /æ/, like the pronunciation of ⟨a⟩ in "cat". It is often transliterated as ⟨ä⟩.

Dungan

In Dungan, it represents the close-mid back unrounded vowel /ɤ/.

Kurdish

In Kurdish, it represents the sound /ε~æ/.

Abkhaz

In Abkhaz, it is a modifier letter, which represents labialization of the preceding consonant /ʷ/. Digraphs with ⟨ә⟩ are treated as letters and given separate positions in the Abkhaz alphabet. It is transliterated into Latin as a superscript w: ⟨ʷ⟩.

Khanty alphabets

In 2013, Khanty alphabets represents it as the reduced mid central vowel /ə/.^[1]

Related letters and other similar characters

• Ӛ ӛ: Cyrillic Schwa with diaeresis
• Ä ä: Latin letter A with diaeresis
• Ӓ ӓ: Cyrillic letter A with diaeresis
• Æ æ: Ligature Æ, an Icelandic, Danish and Norwegian letter.
• Ӕ ӕ: Cyrillic letter Æ
• Ə ə: Latin schwa, used to transliterate Azerbaijani's Cyrillic schwa and 1927—1940 Turkmen's schwa. (Now ä for a schwa in Cyrillic)

Computer codes

Character information

Preview	Ә		ә
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SCHWA		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SCHWA
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	1240	U+04D8	1241	U+04D9
UTF-8	211 152	D3 98	211 153	D3 99
Numeric character reference	Ә	Ә	ә	ә