What ᶰ means
It modifies another sound; it is not a standalone consonant.
The phonetic modifier ᶰ is a separate spacing character, not an ordinary n raised with formatting. Unicode relates it to ɴ, the small-cap N used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a system for writing speech sounds; ɴ represents a voiced uvular nasal, a nasal made near the uvula, the small flap at the back of the mouth. Its exact reading depends on the transcription system.
A proposal to encode additional phonetic modifiers, filed in 2003, cites examples of small-cap n in John Laver’s 1994 phonetics textbook Principles of Phonetics. The examples show the form in transcription before the encoding proposal. Unicode marks ᶰ as not for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA).
Specialist phonetic notation found in linguistic writing.
Treat it as a modifier of a sound, not as a standalone consonant.
Part of the collection
Who writes ᶰ
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Don't confuse it with
2
Questions people ask
1Why does ᶰ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
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How to type or find ᶰ
- Search it as
- phonetic modifier n · small-cap n transcription · raised n phonetics · small capital n notation · uvular nasal sign · IPA letter ɴ · superscript n phonetics
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ᶰ\1DB0Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.