labiodental flap

In 2005 the International Phonetic Association approved a new phonetic symbol, to represent a voiced labiodental flap. It is like a letter v, but with a hook on the right-hand side, thus ⱱ. It is at U+2C71 LATIN SMALL LETTER V WITH RIGHT HOOK.

It was adopted by the IPA too late to make it to the most recent printed Unicode standard, 5.0. However, it was added for the Unicode 5.1 revision, and you’ll find it in the online Unicode charts at www.unicode.org/charts. It may not yet be found in the Microsoft fonts routinely supplied with new PCs, nor in the Lucida Grande that comes with Mac computers. So to use it you may need to download and install a specialist font. Try the SIL fonts Charis SIL and Doulos SIL at www.sil.org/computing, which you can download free. (You will then need to unzip the files and install them.)