Suprasegmental sign
A suprasegmental character is a character used in phonetic transcription to identify suprasegmental features such as stress and vowel quantity .
The International Phonetic Alphabet of the IPA defines the following characters for marking suprasegmental areas:
| character | Unicode code | meaning | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| (No apostrophe ) | U + 02C8 | Main emphasis | A pril [ a pʁɪl ], Ba blocks [ bakə ] |
| ˌ (no comma ) | U + 02CC | Secondary emphasis | Water pfei fe [ ˈvasɐ ˌ p͡faɪ̯fə ], ringlet blu me [ ˈʁɪŋəl ˌ bluːmə ] |
| ː (no colon ) | U + 02D0 | long | Lacquer [ lak ], lay [ la ː k ] |
| ˑ | U + 02D1 | half-length | Beer [ biˑɐ̯ ] (often at Tiefschwas ) |
| ˘ | U + 0306 | extra short | Study [ ˈʃtuːdi̯ʊm ] |
| . | U + 002E (.) | Syllable boundary | Bo - te [ ˈboː . tə ], mu - se - um [ mu . ˈZeː . ʊm ] |
| | | U + 007C (|) | subordinate intonation group (speaking act limit) | You are lucky, aren't you? [ ziː haːbən ↓ ɡlʏk | nɪçt ↑ vaːɐ̯ ] |
| ‖ | U + 2016 | superior intonation group | |
| ◌͡◌ or ◌͜◌ | U + 035C or U + 0361 | Double articulation | black [ ʃvaʁt͜s ] or [ ʃvaʁt͡s ] |
See also: diacritical mark