Schwa (Ә ә; italics: ''Ә ә'') is a letter of the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...

, derived from the Latin letter schwa. It is currently used in Abkhaz, Bashkir, Dungan, Itelmen, Kalmyk, Kazakh,

Khanty The Khanty (), also known in older literature as Ostyaks (), are a Ugric Indigenous people, living in Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug, a region historically known as " Yugra" in Russia, together with the Mansi. In the autonomous okrug, the K ...

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish language ** Northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) **Central Kurdish (Sorani) **Southern Kurdish ** Laki Kurdish *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern ...

Uyghur Uyghur may refer to: * Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia (West China) ** Uyghur language, a Turkic language spoken primarily by the Uyghurs *** Old Uyghur language, a different Turkic language spoken in the Uyghur K ...

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 Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

. The Azeri and some other Latin-derived alphabets contain a letter of identical appearance ( Ə/ə).

Usage

In many

Turkic languages The Turkic languages are a language family of more than 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia (Siberia), and West Asia. The Turkic langua ...

such as Azeri, Bashkir, Kazakh,

and Tatar, as well as the Kalmyk and Khinalug languages, it represents the

near-open front unrounded vowel The near-open front unrounded vowel, or near-low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase of the ligature. Both the symbol and the sound ar ...

, like the pronunciation of in "cat". It is often transliterated as .

Dungan

In Dungan, it represents the

close-mid back unrounded vowel The close-mid back unrounded vowel, or high-mid back unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is , called "ram's horn." This symbol is distinct from the symbol ...

Kurdish

, it represents the sound .

Abkhaz

In Abkhaz, it is a modifier letter, which represents

labialization Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels invol ...

of the preceding consonant . Digraphs with are treated as letters and given separate positions in the

Abkhaz alphabet The Abkhaz alphabet is a Cyrillic alphabet used for the Abkhaz language. Abkhaz did not become a written language until the 19th century. Up until then, Abkhazians, especially princes, had been using Greek (up to c. 9th century), Georg ...

. It is

transliterated Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...

into Latin as a superscript w: .

Khanty alphabets

In 2013,

alphabets represents it as the reduced

mid central vowel The mid central vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. A reduced mid central vowel is known as a schwa. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents either sound is , a rotated lowercase letter e. ...

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

References

Cyrillic letters Ә {{Cyrillic-alphabet-stub