What ꭪ means
In Scots transcription, ꭪ marks a fronted vowel.
A fronted vowel is pronounced with the tongue farther forward. Scots phonetic transcriptions use ꭪ after the vowel symbol it modifies; these pronunciation guides record how a word sounds.
A 1986 figure in the Linguistic Atlas of Scotland shows this tack in Scots phonetic notation.
Is ꭪ the same as the IPA left tack?
No: Scots and IPA use ꭪ under different conventions.
A rare IPA placement puts ꭪ after a letter with a descender for advanced tongue root, where the tongue root shifts forward. The IPA combining left tack, , sits below a base for that feature. In Scots transcription, ꭪ instead marks a fronted vowel.
An older IPA use gave ꭪ the opposite sense, backed articulation. As of 2026, that use is obsolete; represents retraction in current IPA.
Specialist phonetic notation; its Scots reading belongs in a pronunciation transcription.
Do not infer the sender's tone from ꭪ alone.
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsMarks a fronted vowel: the tongue is farther forward in the mouth.
Don't confuse it with
3
The IPA combining right tack below marks retracted tongue root; it is a combining mark below a base.
Combination ideas
1Questions people ask
1Why does ꭪ show as a box?
It can. If a browser or editor chooses a font without ꭪, a missing-glyph box may appear. As of 2026, phonetic fonts such as Charis SIL and Doulos SIL offer specialist symbol coverage.
More like this
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How to type or find ꭪
- Search it as
- Scots phonetics · Scots transcription · IPA left tack · combining left tack below · advanced tongue root · fronted vowel · tack diacritic
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
꭪\AB6ACodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.