{{Short description|Letter of many colonial Mayan alphabets in the Latin script}} {{image frame|border=no|content=255px|class=skin-invert|caption=The cuatrillo}} {{image frame|border=no|content=255px|class=skin-invert|caption=The cuatrillo with comma}} '''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.
As an example of use, the letter appears when spelling the name of the Kʼicheʼ language in the Parra orthography: {{Lang|quc|ꜭiche}}.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/vocabulariocopio00dieg|title=Uocabulario copioso de las lenguas cakchikel y ꜭiche|location=Guatemala}}</ref>
== Unicode == The Cuatrillo was added to Unicode in March, 2008 with the release of 5.1. {{charmap |A72C|name1=LATIN CAPITAL LETTER CUATRILLO |A72D|name2=LATIN SMALL LETTER CUATRILLO |A72E|name3=LATIN CAPITAL LETTER CUATRILLO WITH COMMA |A72F|name4=LATIN SMALL LETTER CUATRILLO WITH COMMA }}
==See also== *Tresillo
==References== {{reflist|colwidth=30em}}
==External links== *[http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=RecentCuatrilloUse Cuatrillo and Tresillo in Recent Linguistic Publications] *[http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n3028.pdf N3028: Proposal to add Mayanist Latin letters to the UCS]
{{Latin script|comma}}
4 Cuatrillo Category:Mayan languages
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