Hwair (lowercase , uppercase Ƕ) is a letter from various medieval Latin alphabets, which is currently still used in the transcription of the Gothic alphabet.
It somewhat resembles a Hv ligature, and was mainly designed to transcribe the Gothic letter of the same name. Its sound is a breathy 'w'. In English dialects that pronounce "wh" (e.g. in "what") differently from just a plain "w", it resembles the "wh".
As with most medieval extended Latin letters, support for it in typefaces is very rare. On computers the letter can be typed with Unicode U+0195 (lowercase) and U+01F6 (uppercase).
Last updated: 10-18-2005 21:46:49