Unaspirated Modifier Letter

˭ marks the preceding consonant as unaspirated: release it without an extra puff of air. In p˭, p remains the sound; the modifier adds pronunciation detail. It appears in language descriptions and specialist transcription of disordered speech.

Text symbol

What ˭ means

It marks the preceding consonant as unaspirated. In t˭, t stays the sound; ˭ rules out the added puff.

Gleason's 1955 example uses t˭ for unaspirated t in the Tojolabal language. A 1997 chart for the extended International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), a guide to speech sounds, uses it for disordered speech; a 2008 discussion records Southern Wakashan use.

Don't confuse it with

⁼

Superscript Equals Sign

⁼ is the mathematical superscript equals sign, a different character. In 2008, a discussion of fieldwork on Khinalug, a language, reported that some fonts made ˭ too wide.

Combination ideas

Unaspirated p.

Unaspirated t.

Questions people ask

Why does ˭ show as a box on some devices?

Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.