What ᶬ means
It marks a dependent labiodental nasal detail.
ᶬ is read as a raised ɱ, the IPA symbol for a voiced nasal made with the lower lip against the upper teeth while air flows through the nose. In phonetic transcription, this superscript m with hook links that nasal gesture to a neighboring sound.
Depending on its placement and the notation, it can mark a nasal lead-in, a nasal release, lingering nasality after a sound, or weak nasal coloring. The surrounding symbols and transcription convention determine the timing.
When was ɱ added to the IPA?
The IPA archive lists it in the 1926 chart.
IPA means International Phonetic Alphabet, a system for writing speech sounds. Its historical chart archive begins in 1888 and lists lowercase ɱ in 1926. Those dates trace the IPA chart record, not the first use of hooked m.
Some Americanist phonetic sources, a separate transcription tradition, use capital Ɱ for a voiceless labiodental nasal; IPA uses lowercase ɱ for a voiced one.
Specialist phonetic notation: its raised position shows that the nasal gesture belongs with another sound.
The raised size can carry timing information; it is not just a smaller ɱ.
Part of collections
Who writes ᶬ
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Don't confuse it with
3
m̪ m̪ is ordinary m with a small mark below; the extended IPA uses it as another notation for the labiodental nasal.
Questions people ask
1Why does ᶬ show as a box on some devices?
Not every system ships a font for the Phonetic Extensions Supplement 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.
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How to type or find ᶬ
- Search it as
- IPA · superscript m with hook · m with hook · labiodental nasal · phonetic transcription
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ᶬ\1DACCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.