Modifier Letter Capital Reversed E

UPA uses its raised form to mark a very short sound. The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses superscript, or raised, letters for very short vowels, such as a schwa (the relaxed, unstressed vowel heard in the first syllable of English “about”), transition vowels between sounds, and other very short sounds. ᴲ supplies the reversed-E letter in that notation; its exact sound depends on the transcription around it.

UPA, also called Finno-Ugric transcription (FUT), is a detailed way to record pronunciation, especially in research on Uralic languages such as Finnish and Hungarian. UPA is documented by 1901, and the exact ᴲ form appears in a 1939 work by Lagercrantz. Unicode encoded the character in 2003, allowing that distinction to remain searchable plain text.

Why can't formatting Ǝ make ᴲ?

Styling raises Ǝ visually, but leaves it a different character. Unicode identifies ᴲ as the superscript form of Ǝ. UPA gives superscript position phonetic meaning, so formatting Ǝ to sit higher can look similar while leaving the underlying text as Ǝ; searches and transcription software can tell them apart.