Modifier Letter Small Turned H

It marks a secondary or transitional labial-palatal element. That means the lips round while the tongue approaches the hard roof of the mouth. The full-size ɥ is the letter in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for a voiced labial-palatal approximant: a smooth speech sound made with that lip-and-tongue position while air keeps flowing. Raised ᶣ attaches similar detail to a base sound; it does not name that sound on its own.

In Akan phonetic writing, tᶣ shows a t with added labial-palatal articulation. If ᶣ stands alone, look for the consonant or other base sound it was meant to modify before assigning a reading.

Why was the turned-h modifier created?

It belongs to a wider system of phonetic modifier letters. John Laver's phonetics textbook printed a turned-h modifier in 1994. A June 2003 encoding proposal included it in a broader set of modifier letters for finer descriptions of speech.

The full-size turned-h letters also have alphabetic uses: Dan and Gio writing in Liberia, and historical Abaza and Abkhaz orthographies. Akan descriptions use forms such as Cᶣ, tᶣ, dᶣ, kᶣ, and sᶣ for labial-palatalized consonants. Chinese phonetic notation has the separate fishhook forms ʮ and ʯ for labialized apical vowels, made with the tongue tip or blade. These are connected notation forms, not interchangeable spellings.