Modifier Letter Small Ts Digraph With Retroflex Hook

It marks a raised retroflex ts affricate. An affricate starts with a brief stop and releases into friction: here, a t-like closure opens into an s-like hiss. “Retroflex” means the tongue tip curls back; voiceless means the vocal cords do not vibrate.

The base-height form ꭧ belongs to Sinological and Sino-Tibetanist phonetic transcription: specialist traditions in Chinese studies and work on the Sino-Tibetan language family. A 1995 Naxi-language dictionary records it; a 2001 Naxi dictionary shows it beside other affricate letters. This tradition kept digraph letters even after the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a system for writing speech sounds, retired some older digraph symbols in favor of sequences such as [ts].

𐞭 is the raised modifier counterpart of ꭧ, not the base-height letter printed smaller. A request backed by the International Phonetic Association in 2020 describes superscript IPA letters as distinct in meaning from base letters. Use the raised form where the transcription calls for a modifier; use ꭧ where it calls for the base-height symbol.

Why does 𐞭 appear as a box?

A box or blank usually means the font cannot display 𐞭. The Gentium version history from SIL lists 𐞭 among supported characters. If another font shows an empty box or substitutes a generic mark, try a font with this glyph before treating the display as a different symbol.