can be used to note gemination, indicating what native writers call a "hard" pronunciation. Sample words include (ekka) 'there is', (šenna) 'tooth', (lebba) 'heart', and (rabba) 'great'. Ligatures The 23rd letter of the alphabet is the digraph adu (da + ya), the relative particle (cf. Arabic tāʾ marbūṭah, Coptic letter "ti", and English ampersand). In addition to normal joining behavior, some Mandaic letters can combine to form various ligatures: /kd/, /kḏ/, /ki/, /kl/, /kr/, /kt/, and /ku/ /nd/, /ni/, /nm/, /nq/, /nt/, and /nu/ /pl/, /pr/, and /pu/ /sˤl/, /sˤr/, and /sˤu/ /ut/ Both adu () and the old ligature kḏ () are treated as single characters in Unicode. Extensions Affrication mark Postclassical and modern Mandaic use many Persian words. Various Mandaic letters can be re-purposed by placing two horizontally-aligned dots underneath (). This idea is comparable to the four novel letters in the Persian alphabet, allowing the alphabet to be used to represent foreign sounds (whether affrication, lenition, or another sound): /g/ becomes /ɣ/ /d/ becomes /ð/ /h/ becomes /ħ/ /tˤ/ becomes /ðˤ/ /k/ becomes /x/ /p/ becomes /f/ /ṣ/ becomes /ʒ/ /ʃ/ becomes /tʃ/, /dʒ/ /t/ becomes /θ/ Ayin Mandaic ayin () is borrowed from Arabic ayin (). Unlike in Arabic, Mandaic ayin does not join with other letters. Punctuation and other marks Punctuation is sparsely used in Mandaic text. A break in text can be indicated by two concentric circles (). A horizontal low line () can be used to justify text. Magical and religious use Each letter of the Mandaic alphabet is said to represent a power of life and light. Mandaeans view their alphabet as magical and sacred. The Semitic alphabet contains 22 letters. In order to bring this number to 24, the number of hours in a day, adu was added and a was repeated as the last letter of the Mandaic alphabet. Without this repetition the alphabet would be considered incomplete for magical purposes. Unicode The Mandaic alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 2010 with the release of version 6.0. The Unicode block for Mandaic is U+0840–U+085F: Gallery See also Syriac alphabet References External links Mandaic.org: Mandaic and Neo-Mandaic Texts and Resources Noto Sans Mandaic from Google Fonts Mandaic Regular Font from the Mandaean Network Mandaic phonetic keyboard from SIL Keyman Aramaic alphabet Abjad writing systems Right-to-left writing systems Mandaic language