The Dania and Swedish dialect letter long i (dotless i with a descender), without the bottom terminal that is normal in italic typeface. Karlgren split the letter into two, with and without the bottom terminal, for Sinological use (see ⟨ʅ⟩). Karlgren also added a t-like terminal at the top for Sinological use; Y. R. Chao made the terminal a more pronounced hook to better match the IPA alphabet.
In some fonts the descender is missing so that the letter resembles a reversed fishhook r ⟨ɾ⟩, though the two letters have no etymological connection. In other fonts the whole letter is raised so that it lies on the baseline and has an ascender rather than a descender.
(phonetics) An apical vowel pronounced with friction: a nonstandard transcription of syllabic /z/, hence [z̩], used in transcribing various Sino-Tibetan languages.
