What ꞵ means
It writes a voiced bilabial fricative in some Gabonese spellings. The sound is made by squeezing air between both lips while the vocal folds vibrate. ꞵ also appears in phonetic work; in each spelling system, the surrounding convention sets its precise reading.
Beta-like forms appear in a 1932 article about Gabonese alphabets and in a phonetics book by Daniel Jones. The cased Latin letter is documented in Gabonese print in 1990, in a system based on the Alphabet scientifique des langues du Gabon (a scientific alphabet for Gabonese languages) published in 1989. A 1999 Gabonese orthography was intended for education.
Is Latin beta the same as Greek beta or sharp s?
No. ꞵ, β, and ß are separate characters. Greek β is the phonetic beta used in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the voiced bilabial fricative; ß is German sharp s, or Eszett. Their names or outlines can prompt a mix-up, but neither is interchangeable with ꞵ. When transcribing, keep the character used in the source.
A specialist letter found in phonetic work and particular Latin-script orthographies, including those for languages of Gabon.
Do not substitute β or ß for ꞵ; they are distinct characters.
Who writes ꞵ
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Don't confuse it with
2
Questions people ask
1Why does ꞵ look different in different fonts?
Font-dependent. Different fonts give ꞵ different outlines, and some do not include it; the underlying character stays the same.
More like this
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How to type or find ꞵ
- Also called
- Latin beta
- Search it as
- beta letter U+A7B5 · Gabonese beta · Gabonese alphabet beta · phonetic beta · IPA beta · Latin beta vs Greek beta · Latin beta vs sharp s
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ꞵ\A7B5Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.