Ɓ

Ɓ (minuscule: ɓ), called B-hook or B with hook, is a letter of the Latin alphabet and the International African Alphabet. Its lower-case form, ⟨ɓ⟩, represents a voiced bilabial implosive in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is used to spell that sound in various languages, notably Fula, Hausa, and Giziga. It was also formerly used in, or at least proposed for, Xhosa and Zulu.

B with hook
Ɓ ɓ
Ƃ ƃ
Usage
Writing system	Latin
Type	Alphabetic
Language of origin	Fula language, Hausa language, Maore Comorian language, Ngas language, Zulu language (obsolete)
Sound values	[ɓ]
In Unicode	U+0181, U+0253
History
Development	Β β 𐌁 B b Ɓ ɓ
Variations	Ƃ ƃ
Other
Writing direction	Left-to-right
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

In Unicode, the upper case Ɓ is in the Latin Extended B range (U+0181), and the lower case ɓ is in the IPA range (U+0253). In Shona, the upper case form is a just a larger form of the lower case letter.

Alternative or obsolete capital form

The Practical Orthography for African Languages (1930 ed.) used a different capital form, similar to the Cyrillic letter be (Б).^[1] A New Testament in the Loma language of Liberia, which was typeset in 1971, used this capital form.^[2]

Encoding

Character information

Preview	Ɓ		ɓ
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B WITH HOOK		LATIN SMALL LETTER B WITH HOOK
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	385	U+0181	595	U+0253
UTF-8	198 129	C6 81	201 147	C9 93
Numeric character reference	Ɓ	Ɓ	ɓ	ɓ

See also

Similar letters

• Ƃ ƃ (Zhuang)
• Б б (Cyrillic)
• ᵷ (lowercase turned g)

Alphabets with this letter

• Africa Alphabet
• African reference alphabet
• Pan-Nigerian alphabet
• Alphabets for the following specific languages:
  • Fula (see also Fula orthographies)
  • Hausa
  • Giziga