What ᵅ means
It is the raised modifier for ɑ, the Latin phonetic letter alpha. In phonetic transcription—the written notation for speech sounds—it can mark ɑ as the lighter part of a diphthong, a sound that moves from one vowel toward another, or as a very short vowel-like element. The transcription system supplies the exact reading.
The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) is a way to write down speech sounds in Uralic languages. Its founding transcription proposal appeared in the first issue of the Finno-Ugric linguistics journal Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen in 1901. That date belongs to the system's printed history, not to ᵅ's Unicode encoding.
Is ᵅ just a superscript alpha?
No. It is a distinct phonetic character, not just styling. Its raised form carries a transcription role; changing a normal alpha's font styling does not create this modifier.
It occupies its own character position rather than attaching like an accent. A missing-glyph box means the active font lacks a drawing for ᵅ; the stored character remains the same.
Specialist phonetic notation, used within written descriptions of speech.
Don't assign it a fixed sound from its shape alone.
Part of collections
Who writes ᵅ
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Don't confuse it with
3
Related characters
2
Questions people ask
1Why does ᵅ show as a box on some devices?
Not every system ships a font for the Phonetic Extensions block. Where none is installed, the character shows as an empty box; adding a font such as Noto fixes it. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.
More like this
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How to type or find ᵅ
- Search it as
- ᵅ · modifier alpha · small alpha modifier · UPA · phonetic transcription · raised alpha · superscript alpha · type modifier alpha
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ᵅ\1D45Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.