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Schwa (Ә ә; italics: Ә ә) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It is currently used in Abkhaz, Bashkir, Dungan, Itelmen, Kalmyk, Kazakh, Kurdish, Uyghur and Tatar. It was also used in Azeri, Karakalpak and Turkmen before those languages switched to the Latin alphabet. The Azeri and some other Latin-derived alphabets contain a letter of similar appearance (Ə/ə).
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Usage
In many Turkic languages such as Azeri, Bashkir, Kazakh, Uyghur and Tatar, as well as the Kalmyk and Khinalug languages, it represents the near-open front unrounded vowel /æ/, like the pronunciation of ⟨a⟩ in "cat". It is often transliterated as ⟨ä⟩.
In Dungan, it represents the close-mid back unrounded vowel /ɤ/.
In Kurdish it represents schwa /ə/ or /ε~a/.
In Abkhaz, it represents labialization of the preceding consonant /ʷ/. Digraphs with ⟨ә⟩ are treated as letters and given separate positions in the Abkhaz alphabet. It is transliterated into Latin as a high ring ⟨˚⟩.