ʕ (majuscule: , minuscule: , superscript: ˤ), called pharyngeal voiced fricative or reversed glottal stop, is a letter of the Latin script. It is used to denote a voiced pharyngeal fricative, either as a caseless letter in the International Phonetic Alphabet, or as a cased pair in several languages of Canada and of the United States. Like the glottal stop ⟨ʔ⟩, which is derived graphically from an apostrophe, it derives from the turned comma ⟨ʻ⟩, or strictly its round form ⟨ʿ⟩.
| Pharyngeal voiced fricative | |
|---|---|
| ʕ | |
.svg) | |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Latin script |
| Type | Alphabetic |
| Language of origin | caising pair: Pilagá |
| Sound values | [ʕ] |
| In Unicode | U+0295, U+A7CE, U+A7CF |
| Alphabetical position | 7 |
| History | |
| Development | ◌̓
|
| Time period | caseless: 1928-present caising pair: 1996-present |
| Sisters | ʔ Ɂ ɂ |
| Other | |
| Writing direction | Left-to-right |
Graphic variants
editIn Unicode, five graphic variants of the pharyngeal voiced fricative letter are available.
- Caseless ʕ, used in phonetic transcriptions and some orthographies.
- Casing pair and , used in Pilagá orthography.
- Superscript ˁ U+02C1, graphical alternative of ʿ
- Superscript ˤ U+02E4, technical superscript of caseless ʕ.
Usage
editThe phonetic symbol ʕ became part of the International Phonetic Alphabet in 1928, replacing the small capital Q ⟨ꞯ⟩ used in the 1912 Principles, to transcribe the pharyngeal voiced fricative. Like the glottal stop symbol, it has since been borrowed in some variants of the Americanist phonetic notation or in transliterations, for example for Arabic romanization, used by some authors.
It is used in the caseless form in several orthographies: Okanagan and Columbia-Moses in the United States, Ditinaht, Nuuchahnulth, St'at'imcets and Thompson in Canada. In Ethiopia, it is used by some authors in Tsamai[1] while others use ⟨/⟩, and was used in Ale[2] but has been replaced by ⟨q⟩.[3]
The bicameral form of the letter (majuscule: , minuscule: ) is used in the Pilagá language to represent the voiced pharyngeal fricative [ʕ]. It was created in 1996 after much deliberation throughout the Pilagá community, along with the rest of the Pilagá alphabet. In Pilagá, it is rendered similarly to the gelded reversed question mark .[4]
Appearance in computer fonts
editThe caseless U+0295 ʕ LATIN LETTER PHARYNGEAL VOICED FRICATIVE has been in Unicode since version 1.1 and has been available in previous phonetic encodings as well.
The casing pair and were added to Unicode in Latin Extended-D on September 9th, 2025, with the release of Unicode 17.0.0.[5] Due to its infrequent usage and recent introduction into Unicode, few fonts have created a glyph for it (such as GNU Unifont), and the character may appear rendered as a box to many users. and occupy codepoints U+A7CE LATIN CAPITAL LETTER PHARYNGEAL VOICED FRICATIVE and U+A7CF LATIN SMALL LETTER PHARYNGEAL VOICED FRICATIVE respectively.
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ Savà, Graziano (2021). "Transcription and orthography in two endangered languages of Ethiopia: Ts'amakko and Ongota". In Micheli, Ilaria; Aiello, Flavia; Toscano, Maddalena; Pensabene, Amelia (eds.). Language and Identity Theories and experiences in lexicography and linguistic policies in a global world. EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste. ISBN 978-88-5511-267-3.
- ^ "Ikkito Poko ʕalena = Ale Alphabet : Trial alphabet chart produced by the participants of the language development workshop held in Arba Minch, 2012". 2012.
- ^ admin (2020-07-27). "Salutări calde din Etiopia - Luminița Prisecaru". Wycliffe România (in Romanian). Retrieved 2025-11-16.
- ^ "Alfabeto pilagá | Lengua pilagá" (in Spanish). Retrieved 2025-09-29.
- ^ "Unicode 17.0.0". www.unicode.org. Retrieved 2025-09-29.
