Ɓ (minuscule: ɓ), called "B-hook" or "B with a hook", is a letter of the Latin alphabet and the International African Alphabet. Its lower-case form, pronounced as /ɓ/, represents a voiced bilabial implosive in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is used to spell that sound in various languages, notably Fula, Hausa and Giziga. It was also formerly used in or at least proposed for Xhosa and Zulu.
In Unicode, the upper case Ɓ is in the Latin Extended B range (U+0181), and the lower case ɓ is in the IPA range (U+0253). In Shona the upper case form is a just a larger form of the lower case letter.
The Practical Orthography for African Languages (1930 ed.) used a different capital form, similar to the Cyrillic letter be (Б).[1] A New Testament in the Loma language of Liberia, which was typeset in 1971, used this capital form.[2]
. Pullum . Geoffrey K. . Geoffrey K. Pullum . Ladusaw . William A. . 1996 . . University of Chicago Press . 23.