Talk:ɾ

Name (fishhook)

The fishhook is not showing when I view this page with either Mozilla Firefox 121.0, Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge on Microsoft Windows 11. In the current version, the character is displayed 7 times. In 2 of the most important instances, the fishhook is missing. The biggest occurrence, to the right, is thankfully OK since it is an image. It seems that both occurrences which use Arial are broken. In these, it displays as some "small letter r with fishhook" without a fishhook (which is not quite an r, but very close), as can be seen on Charbase or FileFormat.Info. Occurrences without problems are using Times New Roman, an SVG and DejaVu Sans.

If I do a test in LibreOffice, I can see that Liberation Serif is also fine. The Arial version is also missing the fishhook in LibreOffice.

Does that mean Arial's SMALL LETTER R WITH FISHHOOK is broken? If that's the case, FileFormat.Info's comparison suggests that's the case for a considerable share of fonts, including:

• Arial (all variants)
• Arimo (all variants)
• Calibri (all variants)
• Consolas (all variants)
• Cousine (all variants)
• FreeSans (all variants)
• Times New Roman Italique

If this really is a font issue, this also affects LATIN SMALL LETTER REVERSED R WITH FISHHOOK (U+027F), as can be seen on FileFormat.Info's list of IPA Extensions characters supported by the Arial Unicode MS font. And it would also affect French Wiktionnaire's entry, Wikipedia's article and the French Wikipédia.

I note that in French, this character is visibly called "LETTRE MINUSCULE LATINE R SANS OBIT"―that is, it's defined by what it doesn't have rather than the extra fishhook. Chealer (talk) 13:34, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I am retracting the above question after asking about this character on StackExchange. The answers elucidate, explaining that what Unicode calls a "fishhook" is not at the bottom―as I thought and the English Wikipedia claims―but top right.

This article is displaying fine, I was simply confused. This confusion was caused by multiple factors mentioned in my answer on StackExchange, including Wikipedia, but also the fact that Unicode's English name for this character (and more) is simply (to say the least) most unclear. As Unicode does not rename characters, this situation will endure.

Thanks to Dan McCloy for his help deciphering this situation. --Chealer (talk) 18:28, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

I removed the fishhook R from the list in the WP article. kwami (talk) 10:53, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much @Kwamikagami

Small remark about your latest edit's first sentence ('Note that the "fishhook r", ɾ, is shaped like a fishhook.'):

1. We avoid using the imperative in Wikipedia articles.
2. It would be clearer to describe it as an "upside-down fishhook".
3. As discussed on StackExchange, ɾ's shape depends on the font, and its shape is very different from a (typical anyway) fishhook in a few. Even in Arial, the resemblance is limited.

I would suggest:

'The glyphs representing the "fishhook r" characters ("ɾ" and "ɿ") have more or less resemblance with an upside-down fishhook.' Chealer (talk) 05:21, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

There is no right-side up for a fishhook, so I don't think that's any clearer.

The shape is consistent among the fonts I've seen. The only variation is the usual serif/sans-serif styling.

"ɿ" is not a fishhook. It's a Karlgren long letter "i" with a top terminal, like the terminal at the bottom of the letter "t". It does look like a reversed "ɾ" in some typefaces, but that's an error. kwami (talk) 05:50, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

My suggestion to describe it as "an upside-down fishhook" referred to fishhooks in the original sense (hooks used for fishing).

As you can see in the comparison from FileFormat.Info, even sans serif fonts have widely varying levels of hooking, from full (Consolas) to none (Calibri, DejaVu Sans) through little (Arial).

Thank you very much for your correction about "ɿ". I would therefore suggest:

'The ɾ ("fishhook r") character's glyphs have more or less resemblance with an upside-down fishhook.' Chealer (talk) 13:37, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

By "consistent", I meant that the minor stylistic differences in fonts were parallel to the differences in a letter like "r". In other words, just what we would expect. That is different from "ɿ", which in some fonts doesn't even look like the same letter. kwami (talk) 20:10, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

It might be consistent, but I still disagree with your claim according to which the only variation is the usual serif/sans-serif styling. I maintain that ɾ's shape depends on the font, and that its shape is very different from a typical hook for fishing in a few fonts. Therefore, I still consider that the article's statement is misleading (although helpful). Chealer (talk) 04:07, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Pullum & Ladusaw, from whom Unicode got so many of their phonetic symbol names, calls it a "fishhook r" (or in their spelling, a "fish-hook r"), and that's the only name I've ever heard used for it. I think we can therefore simply call it "fish(-)hook r" on WK.

They note that typographically it's a turned small-cap J. That was a common source of new letters in the 19th and 20th centuries, because printers could make them by turning the metal type and didn't have to buy special sorts. kwami (talk) 06:07, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

I have no problem with calling it "fish(-)hook r". I was merely suggesting to clarify how it resembled fishhooks.

Thank you very much for this insightful historical explanation. Chealer (talk) 13:41, 17 January 2024 (UTC)