• The letter א
aleph is a zero consonant in
Ashkenazi Hebrew. It originally represented a
glottal stop, a value it retains in other Hebrew dialects and in formal
Israeli Hebrew. • In
Arabic, the non-hamzated letter
alif is often a placeholder for an initial vowel. • In
Javanese script, the letter ꦲ ha is used for a vowel (silent 'h'). • In Korean
hangul, the zero consonant is ()
ieung. It appears twice in , "cucumber". also represents -
ng at the end of a syllable, but historically this was a distinct letter. •
Burmese ,
Khmer អ,
Thai อ (อ อ่าง),
Lao ອ (ອ ໂອ),
Shan ဢ (ဢ ဢၢင်ႇ) are null-initial vowel-support letters. Thai อ่าง, for example, is
ang "basin". (า is the vowel
a and ง the consonant
ng.) อ and ອ pull double duty as vowels in some positions. • In
Thaana of the Maldives, އ is a zero. It requires a diacritic to indicate the associated vowel: އި is
i, އޮ
o, etc. This is similar to an abjad, but the vowel mark is not optional. • The
Lontara script for Buginese, with zero ᨕ, is similar to Thaana, except that without a vowel diacritic ᨕ represents an initial vowel
a. The
Lepcha script of Nepal is similar. • In the
Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, a triangle represents a vowel-initial syllable. The orientation of this triangle specifies the vowel: ᐁ
e, ᐃ
i, ᐅ
o, ᐊ
a. • In the
Romanized Popular Alphabet used for
Hmong, an
apostrophe marks a vowel-initial syllable. The absence of any letter indicates that the syllable starts with a glottal stop, a far more common occurrence. •
Pahawh Hmong, a
semi-syllabary, also has a zero consonant, as well as a letter for glottal stop, with the lack of an initial consonant letter indicating that the syllable begins with a . ==See also==