Palatal hook
The palatal hook (◌̡) is a hook diacritic formerly used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to mark palatalized consonants.[1] It is a small, leftwards-facing hook joined to the bottom-right side of a letter that derives from a subscript letter j, and it is distinct from other IPA hooks that indicate retroflexion, implosion and rhotic vowels. Theoretically, it could be used on all IPA consonant letters – even on those used for palatal consonants – but it is not attested on all of the IPA letters of its era.[2] It was withdrawn by the IPA in 1989, in favor of a superscript j following the consonant (i.e., ⟨ƫ⟩ was replaced with ⟨tʲ⟩).[1]
The IPA recommended that esh ⟨ ʃ ⟩ and ezh ⟨ʒ⟩ not use the palatal hook, but instead get special curled symbols: ⟨ ʆ ⟩ and ⟨ʓ⟩. The same has been done with ⟨ɮ⟩: ⟨⟩.[3] However, versions with the hook have been used and are supported by Unicode, excluding unattested ⟨ɮ⟩.[3]
Palatal hooks are also used for Lithuanian dialectology in the Lithuanian Phonetic Transcription System (or Lithuanian Phonetic Alphabet), including the exceptional form ꞔ, which while graphically resembling a c plus palatal hook is actually a variant of the ᶃ once recommended by the IPA.[4]
Scope
[edit]The palatal hook was introduced in 1921 and officially adopted in 1928. The last published IPA chart to support it was that of 1979. The following single non-palatal consonants appear on that chart. Those attested with palatal hook are bolded. The columns for palatal letters are omitted; they are generally redundant with the hook, though 'palatalized palatals' are sometimes described in the literature. C with hook, ꞔ, is not a palatal letter but a script variant of ᶃ.[2] W with hook, , is attested as a convenient transcription for a palatalized bilabial approximant; ɗ with a hook, , had been used for [ʄ].
ᶆ ɱ ᶇ ɳ 𝼔 ɴ ᶈ ᶀ ƫ ᶁ ʈ ɖ ᶄ ᶃ/ꞔ ʔ ᶂ ᶌ ᶊ ᶎ ʂ ʐ ᶋ/ʆ* 𝼘/ʓ* ᶍ ʍ ꞕ ɦ 𝼕 ɻ ɰ (w̡) 𝼓 * ᶅ ɭ ᶉ 𝼖 ɓ ɠ ʘ ʇ ʗ ʖ
*ʃ, ʒ and ɮ occur with a palatal curl, which was the preferred forms for these letters in the IPA of their era.
Other non-palatal consonants listed under the 1979 chart:
- ᵵ, ɫ̡ (etc.): should be typeset with the hook letter and an overstruck tilde diacritic or vice versa
- ɼ [used for Czech, does not occur palatalized]
- ɺ
- ɧ [used for Swedish, does not occur palatalized]
- the sibilant affricates , 𝼗 𝼒 (the latter also have palatal curl forms ).
The affricate is implied but is not listed under the 1979 chart.
Computer encoding
[edit]Unicode includes a combining character for the palatal hook, but it is not canonically equivalent to the precomposed characters, which should be used instead.[2]
| Code point | Character | Name |
|---|---|---|
| U+01AB | ƫ | LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D80 | ᶀ | LATIN SMALL LETTER B WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D81 | ᶁ | LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D82 | ᶂ | LATIN SMALL LETTER F WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D83 | ᶃ | LATIN SMALL LETTER G WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D84 | ᶄ | LATIN SMALL LETTER K WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D85 | ᶅ | LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D86 | ᶆ | LATIN SMALL LETTER M WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D87 | ᶇ | LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D88 | ᶈ | LATIN SMALL LETTER P WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D89 | ᶉ | LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D8A | ᶊ | LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D8B | ᶋ | LATIN SMALL LETTER ESH WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D8C | ᶌ | LATIN SMALL LETTER V WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D8D | ᶍ | LATIN SMALL LETTER X WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1D8E | ᶎ | LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DAA | ᶪ | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL L WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DB5 | ᶵ | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL T WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+A794 | ꞔ | LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+A795 | ꞕ | LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+A7C4 | Ꞔ | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+A7C6 | Ᶎ | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF12 | 𝼒 | LATIN SMALL LETTER DEZH DIGRAPH WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF14 | 𝼔 | LATIN SMALL LETTER ENG WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF15 | 𝼕 | LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED R WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF17 | 𝼗 | LATIN SMALL LETTER TESH DIGRAPH WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF18 | 𝼘 | LATIN SMALL LETTER EZH WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF2E | | LATIN SMALL LETTER DZ DIGRAPH WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF2F | | LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF30 | | LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL G WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF31 | | LATIN SMALL LETTER GAMMA WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF33 | | LATIN SMALL LETTER PHI WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF34 | | LATIN SMALL LETTER Q WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF35 | | LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL R WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF36 | | LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL INVERTED R WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF38 | | LATIN SMALL LETTER TS DIGRAPH WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF3A | | LATIN LETTER PHARYNGEAL VOICED FRICATIVE WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF3B | | LATIN SMALL LETTER BETA WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF3C | | LATIN SMALL LETTER THETA WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DF3D | | LATIN SMALL LETTER CHI WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DFF5 | | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL D WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DFF6 | | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL H WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DFF7 | | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL N WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DFF8 | | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL S WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| U+1DFF9 | | MODIFIER LETTER SMALL Z WITH PALATAL HOOK |
| In Latin, Cyrillic and Greek |
|
|---|---|
| In Early Cyrillic |
|
| In Indic | |
| In other scripts | |
| Marks used as diacritics |
|
| Non-diacritic uses | |
| In Unicode |
|
References
[edit]- 1 2 Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. 1999.
- 1 2 3 L2/24-050: Unicode request for letters with palatal hook
- 1 2 "Unicode request for lezh with curl" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2024-12-24.
- ↑ Tumasonis, Vladas; Pentzlin, Karl (2011-05-24). "N4070: Second revised proposal to add characters used in Lithuanian dialectology to the UCS" (PDF). ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2.
- ↑ "Unicode Data 18.0.0". Retrieved 2026-09-25.