U+0291 "ʑ" Latin Small Letter Z with Curl Unicode Character

U+0291 "ʑ" Latin Small Letter Z with Curl is a phonetic symbol primarily used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent a voiced alveolo-palatal fricative, a consonant sound produced with the blade of the tongue against the hard palate. This character is visually distinguished from a standard lowercase "z" by the addition of a curl or hook at the top right, which indicates its palatalized quality. It is commonly found in linguistic transcriptions of languages such as Mandarin Chinese, Polish, and some dialects of Japanese, where it helps differentiate subtle phonetic nuances.