Schwa (Ә ә; italics: <span style="font-family: times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: larger">Ә ә ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script, derived from the Ə|Latin letter schwa. It is currently used in Abkhaz, Bashkir, Dungan, Itelmen, Kalmyk, Kazakh, Khanty, Kurdish, Uyghur and Tatar. It was also used in Azeri, 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/ə).

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, like the pronunciation of ⟨a⟩ in "cat". It is often transliterated as ⟨ä⟩. In Dungan, it represents the close-mid back unrounded vowel. In Kurdish, it represents the sound. In Abkhaz, it is a modifier letter, which represents labialization of the preceding consonant. 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⟩. In 2013, Khanty alphabets represents it as the reduced mid central vowel.

Related letters and other similar characters

Computer codes