The hook in Times New Roman (top) and Calibri (bottom)

In typesetting, the hook above (Vietnamese: dấu hỏi) is a diacritic mark placed on top of vowels in the Vietnamese alphabet. In shape it looks like a tiny question mark without the dot underneath, or a tiny glottal stop (ʔ). For example, a capital A with a hook is "Ả", and a lower case "u" with a hook is "ủ". The hook is usually written to the right of the circumflex in conventional Vietnamese orthography. If Vietnamese characters are unavailable, it is often replaced by a question mark after the vowel (VIQR encoding).

This diacritic functions as a tone marker, indicating a "mid falling" tone (hỏi): which is "dipping" (˨˩˥) in Southern Vietnamese or "falling" (˧˩) in Northern Vietnamese; see Vietnamese language § Regional variation: Tones. The Southern "dipping" tone is similar to the questioning intonation in English.

The hook above can be used as a tone marker, but is not regarded as part of the alphabet.

Letters with hook above

Unicode

Apart from precomposed characters, in multiple scripts, the combining diacritical mark is encoded at U+0309  ̉  COMBINING HOOK ABOVE

See also

• Horn (diacritic) (dấu móc)
• Hook (diacritic)

External links

• More information for typographers

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