Extra-Low Tone Bar

It marks the bottom level on a five-step pitch scale. Chao tone letters show pitch relative to a speaker's ordinary range, not a fixed frequency. Linguists use them to describe tones within a word or the pitch movement of speech; the letter alone does not give the word's meaning.

Yuen Ren Chao introduced his five-level tone-letter system in 1930 for accurate, convenient printing. He demonstrated it with English intonation, Cantonese, and Lhasa Tibetan. In 1989, the Kiel convention formalized today's IPA forms with a vertical reference line; earlier IPA tone marks used related forms without it. A separate Chinese corner-tone notation placed marks at the corners of characters. Bridgman and Wells Williams developed that system in the 1830s, and older Chinese sources preserve it.

Does ˩ go before or after a syllable?

After a syllable usually marks word tone; before it can mark intonation. A word's tone is pitch belonging to its pronunciation; intonation is pitch movement across speech. Placement is a clue, not a universal rule, so read it with the transcription's convention.

One ˩ marks a single low level. A sequence such as ˩˥ connects levels into a contour: here the pitch rises from the lowest level to the highest.

How do I type ˩?

Use a Unicode-aware IPA keyboard or direct character entry. If entering the code point, use U+02E9 as a standalone spacing letter.

It occupies its own position in text; a combining accent attaches to a base character instead. Tone-letter sequences may appear joined or separate depending on font and text-shaping support.