What ᵋ means
It records sound detail inside a transcription, not a word by itself.
In UPA, superscripting marks very short sounds, including schwa (the neutral reduced vowel ə) and transition vowels. UPA records speech sounds and word histories in Uralic languages, including Finnish. The 2002 Unicode proposal cites examples from 1901–1902; that dates the notation, not necessarily this exact glyph.
Other keys use raised epsilon differently: as a weak, fleeting, or echoing open-e vowel, or in the North American transcriptions associated with Franz Boas and Edward Sapir. There, it could come before a glottalized sonorant (a resonant consonant such as m or n begun with a brief throat closure) and also mark a glottal stop, the closure itself.
Why does software turn ᵋ into ɛ?
NFKC normalization maps ᵋ to the full-size open-e letter ɛ.
NFKC is a text-normalization process that folds compatibility forms together. This mapping can help software match text, but it erases the raised shape. If a transcription distinguishes height, normalization can remove information.
How can I type ᵋ?
Use Unicode hex input when your editor supports it.
Enter 1D4B in a Unicode hexadecimal input method and confirm the conversion. A Finnish UPA Windows layout also offers an AltGr layer for superscript letters; the exact keystrokes depend on the layout.
Specialist phonetic notation: it belongs in transcriptions, linguistic field notes, and dictionaries.
The same raised epsilon can mark different sounds; check the author's key.
Who writes ᵋ
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Don't confuse it with
3
Questions people ask
2Is ᵋ a glottal stop?
Sometimes. Early Boas–Sapir transcription used raised epsilon for a glottal stop and before a glottalized sonorant. UPA uses superscript position for very short sounds, so the transcription key decides.
Why does ᵋ show as a box?
The font may lack a glyph for it. An empty box or fallback shape is a display problem; it does not change which character the text contains.
More like this
9
How to type or find ᵋ
- Also called
- superscript epsilon · raised epsilon · superscript open e
- Search it as
- UPA epsilon · phonetic notation · glottal epsilon · open-e modifier · IPA modifier letter
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ᵋ\1D4BCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.