Tresillo (letter)

The tresillo

Tresillo (capital: Ꜫ, small: ꜫ; Spanish for "little three") is a letter of several colonial Mayan alphabets in the Latin script that is based on the digit 3. It was invented by a Franciscan friar, Francisco de la Parra, in the 16th century to represent the uvular ejective consonant /qʼ/ found in Mayan languages, and is known as one of the Parra letters. In cursive form, the tresillo is often written similar to ⟨c ̑ ⟩.

As an example of use, the word for fire in the Kaqchikel language, qʼaqʼ, is written ꜫaꜫ in the Parra orthography.[1]

Character information
PreviewꜪꜫ
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER TRESILLO LATIN SMALL LETTER TRESILLO
Encodingsdecimalhexdechex
Unicode42794U+A72A42795U+A72B
UTF-8234 156 170EA 9C AA234 156 171EA 9C AB
Numeric character referenceꜪꜪꜫꜫ
Tresillo and similar characters shown in different fonts:
Blue: Letter Ɛ. – Black: Tresillo. – Green: Turned digit 3. – Red: Outdated Euler constant symbol.
 (Green and red characters shown only for fonts in which they are present).
Fonts: Unicode code tables font, Times New Roman, Arial, Tahoma, Noto Serif, Gentium, Charis SIL, Andika.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Uocabulario copioso de las lenguas cakchikel y ꜭiche. Guatemala. p. 570.