Latin Letter Reversed Glottal Stop with Stroke

Latin Letter Reversed Glottal Stop with Stroke at U+02A2 denotes a phonetic letter for a voiced epiglottal or pharyngealized sound in specialized transcription. It is part of the IPA Extensions block, which contains characters used by the International Phonetic Alphabet and related phonetic notation systems. Its main real-world use is in linguistics, especially in phonetic descriptions of languages with sounds made deep in the throat. In older IPA usage and some reference materials, it represents a voiced epiglottal fricative or approximant, the sound now more commonly written with the reversed glottal stop letter without the stroke in current IPA practice. Readers may encounter it in grammars, language documentation, and comparative studies of Semitic, Caucasian, or other languages where pharyngeal and epiglottal consonants are discussed. It can appear in transcribed word forms, sound inventories, and tables contrasting places of articulation such as pharyngeal, epiglottal, and glottal consonants. Because this is a specialist phonetic character rather than an ordinary Latin letter, it is uncommon in everyday text. It is visually close to other IPA letters based on the glottal stop shape, so careful typography matters when distinguishing it from ʕ, ʔ, or similar symbols in linguistic data.