Combining Double Inverted Breve

It joins two written sound symbols into one phonetic unit.

An IPA tie bar appears in phonetic transcription, a written guide to pronunciation, when two symbols need to be read as one group. An affricate begins with the airflow fully blocked, then releases with friction; the “ch” in English “church” is an example. A doubly articulated consonant uses two closures at once. In a diphthong, the tongue glides between two vowel qualities. The surrounding notation tells you which reading applies.

The earliest documented use is in Ossian Grotenfelt’s 1878 study of Finnish dialects, where the arc marks a diphthong. The IPA’s 1926 chart lists tie bars above and below as affricate markers. In 1932, the bar appears alongside digraph and ligature spellings for affricates; in 1938, the IPA broadens its role to simultaneous articulation, as in k͡p. The 2022 INEL Dolgan Corpus also uses it to join diphthong vowels in a Latin-letter transcription.

how do i type t͡ʃ?

Place it between the two base symbols.

Build t͡ʃ from t + ͡ + ʃ. In text order, the mark follows t and comes before ʃ, even though its curve spans both; do not put it after the pair.

why does the arc look crooked?

A font can misplace a mark that spans two bases.

The arc can shift left or collide with superscripts. A 2023 Source Sans 3 issue records one left-offset problem. Try a font made for phonetic notation before changing the transcription.