U+027E "ɾ" Latin Small Letter R with Fishhook Unicode Character

U+027E "ɾ" Latin Small Letter R with Fishhook is a phonetic symbol used primarily in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent a voiced alveolar tap or flap, a sound produced by a single quick strike of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, as heard in the American English pronunciation of "butter" or "ladder." This character resembles a lowercase "r" but with a distinctive hook or curve at the bottom, which distinguishes it from the standard trilled "r" and other rhotic sounds. It is encoded in the Unicode standard under the Latin Extended-B block, serving a crucial role in linguistic transcription, phonology, and language documentation across various disciplines that require precise representation of spoken language.