Modifier Letter Small Ls Digraph

It marks the fricated release of a plosive.

A plosive is a consonant made by briefly blocking airflow. As it opens, air hisses along the tongue’s sides and over its middle; this is lateral and central frication. In ⟨t𐞙⟩, 𐞙 marks a lateral fricated release from ⟨t⟩, which can make the sequence sound affricate-like.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system for writing speech sounds; its extended set, ExtIPA, covers additional details, including disordered speech. ExtIPA grew from a working group at the 1989 Kiel Convention. Initial recommendations appeared in 1990, and the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association adopted its chart in 1994. A 2020 Unicode proposal notes that superscript lateral fricatives also occur occasionally outside ExtIPA.

Is 𐞙 the same as ʪ?

No; ʪ is a full-size fricative letter, while 𐞙 is a modifier.

The two are related: ʪ represents the lateral-plus-central fricative as a complete segment, while 𐞙 keeps that sound in superscript form to mark a secondary element or release.

The Unicode CLDR 48 fallback table lists ʪ as a compatibility fallback for 𐞙. The fallback leaves a related letter on the page but loses modifier scope, which can change how a narrow phonetic transcription is read.