The palatal hook () is a type of hook diacritic formerly used in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

to represent palatalized consonants. It is a small, leftwards-facing hook joined to the bottom-right side of a letter, and is distinguished from various other hooks indicating

retroflexion A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the har ...

, etc. It was withdrawn by the IPA in 1989, in favour of a superscript j following the consonant (i.e., becomes ). The IPA recommended that esh () and ezh () not use the palatal hook, but instead get special curled symbols: and . However, versions with the hook have also been used and are supported by Unicode. Palatal hooks are also used in Lithuanian dialectology by the

Lithuanian Phonetic Transcription System Lithuanian may refer to: * Lithuanians * Lithuanian language * The country of Lithuania * Grand Duchy of Lithuania * Culture of Lithuania * Lithuanian cuisine * Lithuanian Jews as often called "Lithuanians" (''Lita'im'' or ''Litvaks'') by other J ...

(or Lithuanian Phonetic Alphabet) and in the orthography of

Nez Perce The Nez Percé (; autonym in Nez Perce language: , meaning "we, the people") are an Indigenous people of the Plateau who are presumed to have lived on the Columbia River Plateau in the Pacific Northwest region for at least 11,500 years.Ames, K ...

Computer encoding

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

includes both a combining character for the palatal hook, as well as several

precomposed character A precomposed character (alternatively composite character or decomposable character) is a Unicode entity that can also be defined as a sequence of one or more other characters. A precomposed character may typically represent a letter with a diacri ...

s, including superscript letters with palatal hooks. While LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH PALATAL HOOK has been in Unicode since 1991, the rest were not added until 2005 or later. As such, font support for the latter characters is much less than for the former.

References

{{Reflist Hook, palatal Phonetic transcription symbols