Modifier Letter Small Schwa

It marks a secondary or very brief schwa sound.

A raised schwa can mark a secondary part of a diphthong, a glide into or out of another vowel, or a marginal, especially brief vowel in a syllable. Both IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet) and Americanist transcription (another linguistic notation tradition) use vowel modifiers; raised diphthong notation is more common in some Americanist work.

The wider history of schwa notation reaches back further than this raised form. Tiberian Masorah scholars—Hebrew grammarians who marked vowel reading—used a Hebrew schwa sign in the 10th century. In 1821, Johann Andreas Schmeller used ə for a reduced Bavarian German vowel, and the IPA chart included ə by 1900. The Hebrew sign could indicate a short vowel or no vowel; linguistic schwa names a mid-central vowel and is also used more broadly for a reduced vowel.

How do I type ᵊ?

Use a Unicode-aware input method.

ᵊ is a spacing modifier letter, not a combining mark. It has its own character position beside the sound it modifies; the font determines how high and how far away it appears.

NFKC compatibility normalization can turn ᵊ into full-sized ə, erasing the raised distinction. Preserve the distinction in workflows where it carries meaning.