cuatrillo

{{Short description|Letter of many colonial Mayan alphabets in the Latin script}}

Image:Cuatrillo.png

Image:Cuatrillo with comma.svg

Cuatrillo (capital: Ꜭ, small: ꜭ) (Spanish for "little four") is a letter of several colonial Mayan alphabets in the Latin script that is based on the digit 4. It was invented by a Franciscan friar, Alonso de la Parra, in the 16th century to represent the velar ejective consonant {{IPAslink|kʼ}} found in Mayan languages, and is known as one of the Parra letters.

A derivative of the cuatrillo by adding a diacritic, {{angbr|Ꜯ ꜯ}}, was used for the alveolar ejective affricate {{IPAslink|tsʼ}} found in the same languages.

The cuatrillo is encoded in Unicode at the code points {{unichar|A72C|LATIN CAPITAL LETTER CUATRILLO|html=}} and {{unichar|A72D|LATIN SMALL LETTER CUATRILLO|html=}}, respectively. The cuatrillo-commas are at {{unichar|A72E|LATIN CAPITAL LETTER CUATRILLO WITH COMMA|html=}} and {{unichar|A72F|LATIN SMALL LETTER CUATRILLO WITH COMMA|html=}}.

As an example of use, the letter appears when spelling the name of the Kʼicheʼ language in the Parra orthography: {{Lang|quc|ꜭiche}}.{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/vocabulariocopio00dieg|title=Uocabulario copioso de las lenguas cakchikel y ꜭiche|location=Guatemala}}