Glottal stop (letter)

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The symbol ʔ is a letter of the Latin alphabet, used to represent a glottal stop in several phonetic transcription schemes, as well as in the alphabets of some languages. A superscript version, ˀ, is also used.

Its shape is based on an enlarged curly apostrophe (ʼ),[citation needed] which is also widely used to represent a glottal stop.

Where the glottal stop character is not available, it is sometimes replaced by a question mark (?), which is also its official representation in SAMPA, and to which it bears a striking resemblance.

In phonetic transcription as well as in several languages, a single, tall glyph is used in all situations, with no distinction between uppercase and lowercase. However, in the Chipewyan, Dogrib, and Slavey languages, the tall version is only used for the uppercase, and a short version is used for the lowercase.

In Tongan, the glottal stop is called fakau‘a, and resembles the "inverted comma," or opening inner quotation mark, especially as it is rendered in fonts like Times New Roman.[1]

Contents

Usage

Technical transcription

Vernacular orthographies

Computer encoding

In Unicode 1.0, only the tall version and superscript version were included. In version 4.1 (2005), an uppercase character was added, and the existing tall glottal stop was redefined as its lowercase. Finally, in version 5.0 (2006) it was decided to separate the cased and caseless usages, assigning separate characters to each. The rationale for this decision can be found here.

Appearance Code points Name
ʔ U+0294 LATIN LETTER GLOTTAL STOP
ˀ U+02C0 MODIFIER LETTER GLOTTAL STOP
Ɂ U+0241 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER GLOTTAL STOP
ɂ U+0242 LATIN SMALL LETTER GLOTTAL STOP

See also

References

  1. ^ Brookvale Public School "I have emphasized the inclusion of (‘) the inverted apostrophe whenever this sound occurs in correctly spoken and written Tongan language. Fakau’a (‘) is the 16th letter of our Tongan alphabet, which is often left out by many Tongan authors. Its omission or inclusion in a word changes the sound and the meaning of a word, for example : uma (upper arm or shoulder) and ‘uma (kiss or caress)." - Sisilia L. Tupou-Thomas


The ISO basic Latin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

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