It could be argued that the hook was used to derive the letter ⟨J⟩ from the letter ⟨I⟩, or the letter
Eng ⟨ŋ⟩ from the letter ⟨
N⟩. However, these letters are usually not identified as being formed with the hook. Most letters with hook are used in the
International Phonetic Alphabet, and many languages use them (along with capitals) representing the same sounds. The hook often attaches to the top part of the letter, curling to the left or to the right, finishing the ascender if present. It may then be referred to as a
crook, in some languages like French more commonly than in English that is less successful in mitigating the semantic overload of the
hook term. If the hook attaches to the bottom part of the letter, it is often called a
palatal hook if it curls to the left, or a
retroflex hook if it curls to the right. The retroflex hook occurs on alveolar and
post-alveolar IPA letters; it also occurs on vowel letters, which currently indicates the effect of a retroflex consonant on the vowel, but formally was an option for writing
rhotic vowels. Note that the '
fishhook r', , is shaped like a fishhook; the same is true for reversed . They do not have hook diacritics despite their misleading Unicode names "(Reversed) R with fishhook".
Table Overview ==Unicode==