Combining X Below

It marks added hiss or buzz in specialist phonetic transcription. PHOIBLE, a database of language sound inventories, uses it for a click released with hiss-like noise, a vowel whose tight air passage buzzes, or a fricative (a consonant made by air passing through a narrow gap) without its own sign. For a click, the tongue forms two closures; in the documented example, ͓ follows the click sign ǃ, not the symbol for the closure farther back. The notation system sets the exact reading.

The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) is a specialist system for recording pronunciation details in the Uralic language family, which includes Finnish and Hungarian. Finnish linguist Eemil Nestor Setälä published it in 1901, and a UPA reference sample from 1977 already shows this mark. PHOIBLE also uses it in a separate convention alongside the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), another system for writing speech sounds. Unicode encoded the mark in 2003; that dates digital encoding, not invention.

How do I type combining x below?

Insert it immediately after the sound character it modifies. By itself, the mark may not combine with anything.

The dotted circle in some character charts stands in for the base character; it is not part of the mark. The font and text renderer determine how the mark sits against each base, so its height and alignment can vary.