Modifier R with Tail

It marks a weak r or modifies a neighboring sound.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) letter ɽ represents a voiced retroflex flap: the tongue tip curls back and taps once while the vocal folds vibrate. In English dialect atlases, superscript ɽ marks a weakly pronounced r. In descriptions of Iwaidjan languages, an Australian language family, it modifies ɭ, a retroflex l, to write one sound unit; ɭɽ instead shows two sounds in sequence.

Why do phonetic writers raise ɽ?

To mark a modified or weakly articulated sound.

The IPA chart added ɽ in 1926 as a retroflex “rolled” consonant; the current IPA chart classifies it as a voiced retroflex flap as of 2026. A 2016 description of Wadiyari treats ɽ as distinct from both ɾ and ɖ. Some descriptions of other Indo-Aryan languages instead analyze it as an allophone of ɖ, meaning a context-shaped version of the same sound; Indo-Aryan is a language family found across South Asia.

A 1991 English dialect atlas records superscript ɽ for weakly articulated r; a 1996 Iwaidjan description attaches it to ɭ as a modifier. A Unicode proposal in 2020 documented these conventions and explained why superscript position needs its own text character: ordinary formatting can disappear while the text remains.