Modifier Letter Small V With Right Hook

It marks a raised IPA form of the voiced lip-to-teeth flap.

The full-size ⱱ is the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) sign for a voiced labiodental flap: the lower lip briefly touches the upper teeth while the vocal folds vibrate. In phonetic transcription, a superscript modifier letter can mark a secondary, transitional, or lightly articulated sound. Here, the height carries notation, not decoration.

The sound was first mentioned in print in 1907, in a grammar of Togbo by Pierre Cotel. Didier Demolin first used the right-hook-v shape in 1988. In 2005, the IPA adopted it: v suggests the voiced lip-to-teeth articulation, while the hook suggests a tap or flap.

The sound predates the glyph

The 1989 IPA convention wrote labiodental and bilabial flaps as v̆ and w̆. The right-hook v gave the labiodental sound a dedicated shape; the bilabial version is made between the lips.

A 2004 survey of labial flaps found them mainly in African languages, with both lip-to-teeth and lip-to-lip realizations across several language families. Some languages use the flap to distinguish words; elsewhere it appears mainly in ideophones (sound-symbolic words) or animal names. These differences change what a transcription describes, not what this modifier represents.