What ̼ means
It marks a consonant made with the tongue against the upper lip.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) uses it to mark place of articulation—the contact point for a sound. The base letter supplies manner, such as a stop or nasal, and voicing: t̼ is a voiceless linguolabial stop, d̼ a voiced one, and n̼ a linguolabial nasal. Some descriptions start from a lip-made base such as p or m (p̼, m̼); that choice reflects the analysis.
Linguolabial consonants are documented in languages of Vanuatu and reported for Kajoko Bijago, Umotina, and Mochi Chaga, as well as atypical speech. A 1950 report describes a voiceless stop in Umotina—the sound, not this encoded character. The 1989 Kiel Convention specified placing the subscript seagull below alveolar symbols for this articulation.
Put the mark after its base letter
As a nonspacing mark, modifies the character before it: t followed by the mark gives t̼. By itself it has no base letter to modify, so it may look detached or fail to render in a font with weak support.
Phonetic transcription may place the mark above a letter when a descender or crowded lower marks leave too little room. That placement is for legibility; it does not change the sound value.
A technical mark for phonetic transcription and language documentation.
Read it with its base letter; alone, it does not identify a consonant.
Part of the collection
Don't confuse it with
3Marks apical articulation (tongue tip); it does not mark tongue-to-upper-lip contact.
Marks laminal articulation (tongue blade); it does not mark upper-lip contact.
Marks lip rounding, not contact between the tongue and upper lip.
Combination ideas
3Questions people ask
2Why does the mark sit above the letter?
For legibility. A crowded space below or a letter's descender can move some phonetic marks above the letter without changing their value.
Why does it look detached by itself?
Because a combining mark needs a base letter to anchor it. In transcription it follows the letter it modifies; font support affects how it appears.
More like this
9
Collections with ̼
1
How to type or find ̼
- Also called
- seagull diacritic · subscript seagull · linguolabial diacritic
- Search it as
- IPA · linguolabial · seagull mark · phonetic diacritic · U+033C
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
̼\033Ct, then the mark, to make t̼.033C, then press Alt+X.\u033C after a base letter, as in t\u033C.d\mv for d̼; Charis SIL or Doulos SIL can render phonetic characters.Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.