U+02AF "ʯ" Latin Small Letter Turned H with Fishhook and Tail Unicode Character

U+02AF "ʯ" Latin Small Letter Turned H with Fishhook and Tail is a phonetic symbol used primarily in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet to represent a specific voiceless sound, typically a voiceless palatal or pre-velar fricative. Its shape is derived from the letter h, rotated 180 degrees and modified with a fishhook-style curl at the top and a short tail at the bottom, distinguishing it from similar characters in the same phonetic set. This character was added to Unicode as part of the Latin Extended-B block to support precise transcription in linguistic studies of Uralic languages, such as certain dialects of Sami or Finno-Ugric languages. Its appearance may vary across fonts but maintains the distinct hook and tail features to ensure accurate phonetic representation.