Retroflex hook
The retroflex hook is a diacritical mark . It is included in the International Phonetic Alphabet and is also used orthographically in some, mainly African, languages. It has the shape of a hook to the right.
The retroflex hook is used today in the International Phonetic Alphabet to form characters for retroflex sounds based on their alveolar equivalent, e.g. B. is the [ ɳ ] which the voiced retroflex Nasal represents a combination of the alveolar [ n ] and a Retroflex hooks. Some orthographic characters such as the Ʈ also contain a retroflex hook.
The retroflex hook used to have a second meaning. Associated with vowels, it represented rhotic vowels. This usage was abolished in 1989, instead a rhoticity hook (˞) is used, which is no longer associated with the vowel, but represents an independent symbol. Only combinations with ə and ɜ form ligatures (ɚ, ɝ).
Unicode contains combinations with consonants in the Unicode block IPA extensions as well as combinations with vowels in the Unicode block Phonetic extensions, additions , further characters can be represented by adjusting the combining retroflex hook at code point U + 0322.