🔍

Loading symbols…

››

combining almost equal to above

Combining Almost Equal to Above

In older extIPA, ͌ is the double-tilde mark placed after a sound whose airflow turns turbulent near the soft palate. Since 2024, extIPA uses a replacement because the double tilde can blur with a single tilde or a strong-nasalization mark.

Text symbol

Also called: double tilde · superscript double tilde
Search it as: extIPA · IPA diacritic · double tilde mark · velopharyngeal friction · phonetic transcription · speech transcription · nasalization · combining diacritic
Shows up in: Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws

What ͌ means

It marks velopharyngeal friction: noisy airflow at the soft-palate passage. ExtIPA, an extension of the International Phonetic Alphabet for describing speech differences, places it after the sound being described, as in s͌ and ʒ͌.

ExtIPA helps transcribe disordered speech and voice quality beyond the symbols in basic IPA. An early documented approval milestone is the 1989 IPA Congress in Kiel; the history of this notation is separate from its later computer encoding.

Why was the double tilde replaced? At small sizes, its two strokes can merge into one, and double tildes already mark strong nasalization in some transcriptions. The 2024 ICPLA revision changed extIPA notation to avoid that collision.

This is a specialist phonetic mark, chiefly encountered in older extIPA transcriptions of disordered speech.

For current extIPA, use 𐞐; reserve ͌ for older transcriptions.

Drift: The current extIPA replacement is 𐞐. As of 2026, keep ͌ for reading or reproducing older notation.

Don't confuse it with

◌̃

Yes at small sizes: ͌ can look like one tilde. A single tilde marks nasalization; the 2024 revision noted this ambiguity.

◌̃̃

Two nasal tildes indicate strong nasalization in some transcriptions—the sound carries more nasal resonance. That is separate from ͌'s older velopharyngeal-friction reading.

Combination ideas

Pre-2024 extIPA: `s͌` means an s-like sound with added velopharyngeal friction.

Pre-2024 extIPA: `ʒ͌` adds velopharyngeal friction to the voiced “sh” sound, like the middle consonant in English “vision.”

Questions people ask

Why does ͌ show as a box on some devices?

Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.

How to type ͌

Windows (Word)

Alt+XType 034C, then Alt+X to get ͌.

Windows

Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).

macOS

Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “combining almost equal to above”.

Linux

Ctrl+Shift+UType 034c, then Enter or Space.

HTML

͌

CSS

\034C

After a base sound

Enter the speech sound first, then ͌; combining marks are stored after the base character they modify.

Linux Unicode entry

How to type ͌ on Linux: in an app that supports Unicode entry, press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 034C, then press Enter.

Why this mark floats

Why does this mark float? In some Linux apps, an isolated mark appears alone or over a dotted circle. As of 2026, the exact display depends on the app and font.

HTML

In HTML, place `͌` after the base character. Add a dotted circle only when the mark must be shown by itself.

Codes and encoding1 code points

HTML decimal

HTML hex

CSS content

content: "\034C";

Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.

URL encoded

%CD%8C

On screen

Code points

JS .length

UTF-8 bytes

A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.

Families this belongs to

Accents & marks659 symbols

^`¨¯´¸ʰ ʱ ʲ ʳ ʴ ʵ