Aheenam

If we sum up all the characters of the previous chapters we get 246 in total (30 + 216). There is one more character that completes the Tamil script ஃ｢x｣

ஃ｢x｣ is neither a vowel nor a consonant and it is also not a compound character. It is a special character. There are a lot of names for that character like Aheenam, Aaytham, akku or akkanna. The first two are more common ones.

In this book, we will call it Aheenam.

That letter is a hybrid of the English ｢g｣ and ｢h｣ sounds. It can be compared to the ｢ch｣ sound in the German language. Another example would be the word "Loch Ness" (pronounced in the Scottish way)

The character ஃ｢x｣ is not used that often anymore in Tamil but sometimes it is used as a placeholder when writing foreign words in Tamil that have sounds that do not exist in the Tamil script.