What ᶯ means
It marks a nasal made with the tongue tip curled back as a secondary or transitional detail.
Phonetic transcription writes down speech sounds. The raised form marks this nasal as an attached detail, not the main consonant; nearby notation shows how the sounds connect.
It can mark a nasal start or release tied to a stop consonant—a sound made by briefly blocking airflow in the mouth, then letting it out. Secondary means it accompanies the main sound; transitional means it captures movement into or out of it.
How did ᶯ enter phonetic transcription?
It grew out of specialist transcription practice.
A 2004 Unicode proposal cited transcription samples in Laver’s 1994 work that use the raised form, and treated ᶯ as an attested consonant modifier. The proposal also notes that linguists used some modifier letters even though they were not all officially approved IPA symbols.
Transcription conventions vary. As of 2026, the International Phonetic Alphabet chart lists full-size ɳ as the voiced retroflex nasal; a smaller modifier does not automatically count as a separate official IPA symbol.
How do you type ᶯ?
Use Unicode input supported by your operating system.
There is no single key sequence that works across keyboards. On Linux, press CtrlShiftU, type 1DAF, then press Enter. On Windows, hold Alt, press on the numeric keypad, type 1DAF, then release Alt; Unicode input may need to be enabled.
Specialist phonetic notation; its exact role depends on the transcription system.
Read the raised n as a phonetic mark, not decoration.
Part of collections
Who writes ᶯ
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Don't confuse it with
3
Questions people ask
1Why does ᶯ show as a box?
Your current font, or its fallback, lacks a glyph for ᶯ. The app may show a box in its place; a font with phonetic coverage can make the character visible.
More like this
10
How to type or find ᶯ
- Search it as
- ᶯ · 1DAF · superscript retroflex n · superscript n · phonetic modifier · IPA symbol · n with right hook · retroflex nasal · small retroflex n · n with curled tail
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ᶯ\1DAFWhy is ᶯ a box on my screen?
fsymbols draws rare signs with its own fonts, so they show here even where your device has none. An app or website without such a font shows an empty box (□) or a question mark instead. Turn our fonts off to see each sign as your device draws it by itself: a box here means a box in your chats and documents too.
Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.