ʻ

See also: ‘ [U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK], ʼ [U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE], and ◌̒

ʻ U+02BB, ʻ MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA ← ʺ [U+02BA] Spacing Modifier Letters ʼ → [U+02BC]

ՙ U+0559, ՙ ARMENIAN MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING [unassigned: U+0557–U+0558] ← Ֆ [U+0556] Armenian ՚ → [U+055A]

Translingual

Symbol

ʻ

1. Spiritus asper used in Wade-Giles romanization of Mandarin Chinese.

   Tʻai-pei or Taipei, capital of Taiwan (ROC)

   • 1898, Harlan P. Beach, Dawn on the Hills of Tʻang‎ (in English), New York, →OCLC, page 154:

     Chiang-su was the main centre of the great Tʻai Pʻing rebellion, Nanking being the rebel capital from 1853 to 1864.

   • 1904, C. D. Tenney, Geography of Asia‎ (in English), New York: MacMillan and Co, →OCLC, page 6:

     Chʻing-wang-tao (秦皇島) is a deep water port on the Gulf of Pechili, and is important as a port for the shipping of coal, and also as the winter port for the exports and imports of Tientsin.

   • 1913, Kinosuke Inouye, “The Coal Resources of Manchuria”, in The Coal Resources of the World‎, volume 1 (in English), Morang & Co. Limited, →OCLC, page 256:

     Coal is found in several places along the Hun-chiang on the north-east of Tʻung-hua.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:ʻ.
2. (UPA, NAPA) aspiration.
3. (IPA, obsolete) (light) aspiration.
4. (ALA-LC romanization) transliteration of the Semitic letter ayin.

   Synonyms: ʿ, ʽ, ᶜ

5. (international standards) Transliterates Perso-Arabic letter ع in Indic languages.

Usage notes

• The spiritus asper was added to the IPA for light aspiration in 1929, with a full letter ⟨h⟩ used for heavy aspiration. Sometime in the 1970s the superscript ⟨ʰ⟩ was approved as an alternative to the spiritus asper, and in 1979 the other two options were withdrawn.

Further reading