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– even on those used for palatal consonants – but it is not attested on all of the IPA letters of its era.^[2] It was withdrawn by the IPA in 1989, in favor of a superscript j following the consonant (i.e., ⟨ƫ⟩ was replaced with ⟨tʲ⟩).^[1]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

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 and set with the hook; the hooked letters are either in Unicode or are scheduled to appear in Unicode 18 in 2026. The columns for palatal letters are omitted; they are generally redundant with the hook, though 'palatalized palatals' are 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	q̡ (𝼴)	ɢ̡ (𝼰)					ʔ
ɸ̡ (𝼳)	β̡ (𝼻)	ᶂ	ᶌ	θ̡ (𝼼)	ð̡ (𝼯)	ᶊ	ᶎ	ʂ	ʐ	ᶋ/ʆ*	𝼘/ʓ*	ᶍ	ɣ̡ (𝼱)	χ̡ (𝼽)	ʁ̡ (𝼶)	ʍ		ħ̡ (𝼲)	ʕ̡ (𝼺)	ꞕ	ɦ
		ʋ̡ (𝼹)				𝼕		ɻ				ɰ				w̡ (𝾂)
						𝼓	ɮ (𝽧)*
						ᶅ		ɭ
						ᶉ								ʀ̡ (𝼵)
						𝼖		ɽ̡ (𝼷)
	ɓ						ɗ̡ (𝼭)						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 ʦ̡ (𝼸) 𝼗 𝼒. (The forms with a palatal curl, 𝼬 and 𝼫, will become available with Unicode 18.)

The affricate ʣ̡ (𝼮) is implied but is not listed under the 1979 chart.

Computer encoding

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]

References