Schwa (Cyrillic)

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Heading=Cyrillic letter Schwa


uuc=04D8|ulc=04D9

Schwa (majuscule:unicode|Ә, minuscule:unicode|ә) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is currently used in Abkhaz, Bashkir, Dungan, Kalmyk, Kazakh, Kurdish, and Tatar. It was also used in Azeri, and Turkmen, before those languages switched to the Latin alphabet.

Phonetic value

In Azeri (formerly), Bashkir, Kalmyk, Kazakh, and Tatar it represents the "a" in English "cat" (IPA: IPA|/æ/). It is often transliterated as "ä".

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

In Kurdish, it represents schwa IPA|/ə/.

In Abkhaz it represents labialization of the preceding consonant (IPA: IPA|/ʷ/). Digraphs with unicode|ә are treated as letters in Abkhaz, and given separate positions in the Abkhaz alphabet. It is transliterated into Latin as a high ring (˚).

ee also

*Ə (Latin letter)
*Schwa
*Schwa with diaeresis

References