The Osmanya range was introduced with version 4.0 of the Unicode Standard and is located in Plane 1 (the Supplementary Multilingual Plane). Windows XP and later versions support supplementary characters by default. In Windows 2000, you need to enable support for supplementary characters. These characters cannot easily be displayed in earlier versions of Windows.
The Osmanya script was used for the Somali language, and is also known as Cismaanya and Osmania. The script was devised in the early 1920’s by Osman Yusuf Keenadiid, and co-existed with a Latin-based system for several years, until the Latin system was officially adopted in 1973.
Microsoft Windows incorporates support for Osmanya Unicode from Windows 7 onwards.
The characters that appear in the “Character” columns of the following table depend on the browser that you are using, the fonts installed on your computer, and the browser options you have chosen that determine the fonts used to display particular character sets, encodings or languages.
You can find some or all of the characters in this range in the Windows Unicode font Andagii, Code2001, Ebrima (in Windows 7) and MPH 2B Damase.
To see exactly which characters are included in a particular font, you can use a utility such as Andrew West’s BabelMap.
If you are not familiar with the characters, you can check the characters displayed here with the graphical display at http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10480.pdf.
Character (decimal) | Decimal | Character (hex) | Hex | Name |
---|---|---|---|---|
𐒀 | 66688 | 𐒀 | 10480 | OSMANYA LETTER ALEF |
𐒁 | 66689 | 𐒁 | 10481 | OSMANYA LETTER BA |
𐒂 | 66690 | 𐒂 | 10482 | OSMANYA LETTER TA |
𐒃 | 66691 | 𐒃 | 10483 | OSMANYA LETTER JA |
𐒄 | 66692 | 𐒄 | 10484 | OSMANYA LETTER XA |
𐒅 | 66693 | 𐒅 | 10485 | OSMANYA LETTER KHA |
𐒆 | 66694 | 𐒆 | 10486 | OSMANYA LETTER DEEL |
𐒇 | 66695 | 𐒇 | 10487 | OSMANYA LETTER RA |
𐒈 | 66696 | 𐒈 | 10488 | OSMANYA LETTER SA |
𐒉 | 66697 | 𐒉 | 10489 | OSMANYA LETTER SHIIN |
𐒊 | 66698 | 𐒊 | 1048A | OSMANYA LETTER DHA |
𐒋 | 66699 | 𐒋 | 1048B | OSMANYA LETTER CAYN |
𐒌 | 66700 | 𐒌 | 1048C | OSMANYA LETTER GA |
𐒍 | 66701 | 𐒍 | 1048D | OSMANYA LETTER FA |
𐒎 | 66702 | 𐒎 | 1048E | OSMANYA LETTER QAAF |
𐒏 | 66703 | 𐒏 | 1048F | OSMANYA LETTER KAAF |
𐒐 | 66704 | 𐒐 | 10490 | OSMANYA LETTER LAAN |
𐒑 | 66705 | 𐒑 | 10491 | OSMANYA LETTER MIIN |
𐒒 | 66706 | 𐒒 | 10492 | OSMANYA LETTER NUUN |
𐒓 | 66707 | 𐒓 | 10493 | OSMANYA LETTER WAW |
𐒔 | 66708 | 𐒔 | 10494 | OSMANYA LETTER HA |
𐒕 | 66709 | 𐒕 | 10495 | OSMANYA LETTER YA |
𐒖 | 66710 | 𐒖 | 10496 | OSMANYA LETTER A |
𐒗 | 66711 | 𐒗 | 10497 | OSMANYA LETTER E |
𐒘 | 66712 | 𐒘 | 10498 | OSMANYA LETTER I |
𐒙 | 66713 | 𐒙 | 10499 | OSMANYA LETTER O |
𐒚 | 66714 | 𐒚 | 1049A | OSMANYA LETTER U |
𐒛 | 66715 | 𐒛 | 1049B | OSMANYA LETTER AA |
𐒜 | 66716 | 𐒜 | 1049C | OSMANYA LETTER EE |
𐒝 | 66717 | 𐒝 | 1049D | OSMANYA LETTER OO |
𐒠 | 66720 | 𐒠 | 104A0 | OSMANYA DIGIT ZERO |
𐒡 | 66721 | 𐒡 | 104A1 | OSMANYA DIGIT ONE |
𐒢 | 66722 | 𐒢 | 104A2 | OSMANYA DIGIT TWO |
𐒣 | 66723 | 𐒣 | 104A3 | OSMANYA DIGIT THREE |
𐒤 | 66724 | 𐒤 | 104A4 | OSMANYA DIGIT FOUR |
𐒥 | 66725 | 𐒥 | 104A5 | OSMANYA DIGIT FIVE |
𐒦 | 66726 | 𐒦 | 104A6 | OSMANYA DIGIT SIX |
𐒧 | 66727 | 𐒧 | 104A7 | OSMANYA DIGIT SEVEN |
𐒨 | 66728 | 𐒨 | 104A8 | OSMANYA DIGIT EIGHT |
𐒩 | 66729 | 𐒩 | 104A9 | OSMANYA DIGIT NINE |
Copyright © 2003–2009 Alan Wood
The hexadecimal numbers and the character names in the above table are taken from the Unicode 4.0 Character Database, Copyright © 1991–2003 Unicode, Inc., as contained in UnicodeData.txt on the Unicode ftp site (ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/) in June 2003.
Created 21st July 2003 Last updated 30th November 2009