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, 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[disambiguation needed]. It was also formerly used in or at least proposed for Xhosa and Zulu.
InUnicode, 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]ANew Testament in the Loma languageofLiberia, which was typeset in 1971, used this capital form.[2]