Latin Letter Glottal Stop with Stroke

Latin Letter Glottal Stop with Stroke at U+02A1 represents a voiced epiglottal stop in phonetic transcription, a consonant made by closing the epiglottis against the pharyngeal wall. It belongs to the IPA Extensions block and is a lowercase Latin phonetic letter rather than ordinary alphabetic punctuation. Its main real-world use is in the International Phonetic Alphabet for languages whose sound systems include epiglottal consonants. Linguists may use ʡ in field notes, grammars, dictionaries, and academic articles for Semitic and Caucasian language descriptions, among others, when distinguishing an epiglottal stop from the more familiar glottal stop. The character also appears in comparative phonetics, speech pathology, and articulatory descriptions where precise place of articulation matters. It is uncommon in everyday text, and it can be confused visually with related IPA symbols such as the glottal stop letter ʔ or the pharyngeal fricative letter ʕ, so the surrounding phonetic analysis is important for interpreting it correctly.