B with Accent: ḃ Is Irish bh, ḅ an Implosive, ḇ a Hebrew v
None of the b letters with a mark stands for a plain b. The dot on ḃ is Irish bh, said v or w. Kalabari writes its implosive b as ḅ, a sound most African alphabets spell ɓ. And ḇ romanizes Hebrew ב without its dagesh, which Israelis say as v. Tap a tile to copy one.
How do you type ḃ on a keyboard or phone?
On a Mac, ḃ is Fn/Globe+E, then search "latin small letter b with dot above", then ḃ; on Windows it is Win+., then Symbols, then ḃ. Each row below gives the documented method for one device or app; the vendor help pages they come from are linked under the table.
| Device or app | Keys |
|---|---|
| Mac | Fn/Globe+E, then search "latin small letter b with dot above", then ḃ How to type accents on a Mac |
| Windows | Win+., then Symbols, then ḃ How to type accents on Windows |
| Microsoft Word | 1e03, then Alt+X How to type accents in Word |
| Google Docs | Insert, then Symbols, then Special characters, then search "latin small letter b with dot above" How to type accents in Google Docs |
Sources:Mac (Apple) (opens in a new tab)Windows (Microsoft) (opens in a new tab)Microsoft Word (Microsoft) (opens in a new tab)Google Docs (Google) (opens in a new tab)
- ḃ b with dot above
- Ḃ capital b with dot above
- ḅ b with dot below
- Ḅ capital b with dot below
- ḇ b with line below
- Ḇ capital b with line below
Which letters are related to b with accent?
These letter pages share an accent mark or a language with ḃ Ḃ ḅ Ḅ ḇ Ḇ, the most shared languages first.
What does the mark on ḃ, ḅ or ḇ do to the b?
Each mark tells you the b is not the ordinary one. A b with accent is softened, made implosive or made emphatic, and the table shows which. Wiktionary supplies every row, through its entries for ḃ (opens in a new tab), ḅ (opens in a new tab), ḇ (opens in a new tab) and the Sindhi letter ٻ (opens in a new tab), and Unicode's names list (opens in a new tab) names the marks.
| Letter | Mark | Written by | Sound | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ḃ Ḃ | dot above | Irish in Gaelic type | /w/ or /vʲ/, as bh | softened, no longer a stop |
| ḅ Ḅ | dot below | Kalabari | /ɓ/ | implosive |
| ḅ | dot below | romanized Arabic dialects, such as Tunisian | /bˤ/ | emphatic, pharyngealized |
| ḇ Ḇ | line below | scholarly romanization of Hebrew (Wiktionary's guidelines) | ב without a dagesh, v today | softened |
| ḇ | line below | Wiktionary's romanization of Sindhi ٻ | /ɓ/ | implosive |
Two rows share ḅ and two share ḇ, and in both cases the pair does not agree on the sound. A ḇ in a Hebrew grammar is a v. A ḇ in a Sindhi word list is an implosive b. Find out what the text is written in, and only then decide what its b stands for.
AccentPad takes its language data from CLDR, and no CLDR alphabet holds any of these letters, so this page shows no languages card. Every row above rests on a dictionary entry or a romanization table, not on a national alphabet.
The Irish dot is the one most readers meet. Wiktionary says ḃ in Gaelic type equals bh in roman type, and its entry for the ponc séimhithe (opens in a new tab) calls the dot a lenition mark.
The b words show what it does to the sound. Bean (opens in a new tab), woman, starts with /bʲ/, but bhean (opens in a new tab) starts with /vʲ/. Bó (opens in a new tab), cow, starts with /bˠ/, and bhó (opens in a new tab) with /w/ in Connacht and /vˠ/ in Munster. Gaelic type prints that bh as ḃ. Softening is not special to b, and the G, M and T pages follow the dot on gh, mh and th.
Which alphabets spell the implosive b as ḅ, ɓ, bh or plain b?
The implosive b, IPA ɓ (opens in a new tab), is made by drawing air in rather than pushing it out. Wiktionary lists it under many languages, and they do not agree on a letter. The ḅ of Kalabari is one answer among several.
| Language or script | How it writes /ɓ/ | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Kalabari | ḅ Ḅ | a b with a dot below |
| Sindhi, Arabic script | ٻ | romanized ḇe in Wiktionary |
| Sindhi, Saraiki and Marwari in Devanagari | ॿ | romanized bba |
| Hausa, Fula, Kpelle, Maore Comorian, Ngas, Noon | ɓ Ɓ | the hooked b, also the IPA symbol |
| Pular in Guinea's alphabet, until 1984 | bh | now the hooked b |
| Xhosa and Zulu | b | the hooked b was used once, then dropped |
The Devanagari row comes from Wiktionary's entry for ॿ (opens in a new tab), which says the letter is used mainly in Sindhi, Saraiki and Marwari. The Pular and Xhosa rows come from the ɓ entry. Xhosa's bh (opens in a new tab) entry adds that a plain B is /ɓ/ in Xhosa, so the sound kept the plain letter after the hook went.
Two lessons follow. First, ɓ and ḅ are the same sound in different clothes, so a learner can read one through the other. Second, a writer cannot swap them. Each language has picked its letter, so a Kalabari word takes ḅ and a Hausa word takes ɓ, whatever the IPA says.
Why does a computer file ḅ under b but keep ɓ apart?
Because ḅ is built from a b and ɓ is not. Unicode's names list decomposes ḅ to b plus U+0323, the combining dot below, and gives ɓ no decomposition at all: it is its own letter, noted as the implosive bilabial stop. Software that ignores accents works on decompositions, so the two letters part ways.
We tested both on 2026-10-10 in Node.js v26.0.0 with ICU 78.3. The accent strip was NFD normalization, defined in UAX #15 (opens in a new tab), followed by deleting every mark. The comparisons used ICU collators for English and Hausa.
| Test | ḅ | ɓ |
|---|---|---|
| Decomposition in the names list | b + U+0323 | none |
| Accent strip | becomes b | stays ɓ |
| Equal to b when accents are ignored | yes | no |
| Sorted with bata, bz and cara | right after bata | after bz, before cara |
| Uppercase | Ḅ | Ɓ, U+0181 |
The same strip turned ḃ and ḇ into b too, and the control, é, became e. The sort result was the same under English and Hausa rules: ḅata sat beside bata, while ɓata sorted as a letter after b.
In practice, an accent-insensitive search for a Kalabari word typed with a plain b will find the ḅ spelling. The same search will not find a Hausa word with ɓ, and a slug or file name made by stripping accents keeps the ɓ. If a system must match both, map ɓ to b yourself; normalization will not do it.
Can bh stand in for an Irish ḃ, and what else does bh spell?
For Irish, yes. Unicode's names list files ḃ under Irish Gaelic in the old orthography, and Wiktionary's entries for ḃ (opens in a new tab) and Ḃ say each is equivalent to bh or Bh in roman type. A plain b is the wrong fallback. In our Node.js test, stripping the dot from ḃean gave bean, which reverses the softening and turns bhean back into the unlenited word.
Outside Irish, though, bh is no reliable sign of a soft b. Wiktionary gives it these values:
| Where bh is written | Sound |
|---|---|
| Irish | /w/ or /vʲ/, the ḃ of Gaelic type |
| Xhosa, as in bhala, to write | /b̥ʱ/, a breathy b |
| Sindhi romanization of ڀ, bhe | /bʱ/ |
| Pular in Guinea's alphabet, until 1984 | /ɓ/ |
| Juǀ'hoan | /b͡pʰ/ |
The Xhosa example is from Wiktionary's bhala (opens in a new tab), and the Sindhi one from ڀ (opens in a new tab). So a converter can safely turn ḃ into bh, but it should turn bh back into ḃ only in Irish text meant for Gaelic type. Everywhere else the bh belongs to its own language and must stay as written.
When is Hebrew ב romanized b, v or ḇ?
Hebrew ב (opens in a new tab) is one letter with two sounds. Wiktionary's entry says it takes a dot inside, the dagesh, when it stands for /b/, and Modern Israeli Hebrew says the undotted letter as [v]. Each romanization scheme handles that split in its own way, and only the scholarly one uses a b with accent.
| Form of the letter | Wiktionary, modern | Wiktionary, scholarly | UN system for place names |
|---|---|---|---|
| בּ, with dagesh | b | b | b |
| ב, without dagesh | v | ḇ | v |
The first two columns are from Wiktionary's Hebrew entry guidelines (opens in a new tab). The last is from the UN report on Hebrew romanization (opens in a new tab), version 4.0 of 2013, whose system Israel applies to names on maps and road signs. A note in its table says the v does not occur at the beginning of a name. The guidelines explain why: a word-initial ב takes the dagesh, so it is always b there.
Common words show the v side. Wiktionary romanizes לב (opens in a new tab), heart, as lev, אב (opens in a new tab), father, as av, טוב (opens in a new tab), good, as tov, and ערב (opens in a new tab), evening, as érev. By the guidelines' rule, a scholarly text writes each of those v's as ḇ. בית (opens in a new tab), house, is báyit, with a b, because its ב opens the word and carries the dagesh.
The guidelines treat ḇ as one of a set. Their scholarly column also writes ḡ, ḏ, ḵ, p̄ and ṯ for the other letters that lose their dagesh, and the dagesh turns all of them back into g, d, k, p and t. Yiddish has its own answer for the v: Wiktionary lists בֿ, veys, a ב with a line over it.
So the b with line below tells you two things at once: the text is a scholarly transliteration, and the letter behind it was said soft.
How to type b with accent, step by step
Step 1: Word: 1e03, 1e05 or 1e07, then Alt+X
Enter 1e03 in the document and hit Alt+X; Word swaps those four characters for ḃ. 1e05 becomes ḅ, 1e07 becomes ḇ, and 1e02, 1e04 and 1e06 give the capitals.
Step 2: Mac: Fn/Globe+E, then search the letter's name
Fn/Globe+E brings up the Character Viewer. In its search box, b with line below finds ḇ; dot above and dot below find the other two. Pick the b you want from the results.
Step 3: Windows: Win+. and the Latin symbols
Win+. opens the emoji panel. Its Symbols tab has a Latin section where ḃ, ḅ and ḇ follow one another, and a click drops one into the text.
Step 4: Google Docs: Special characters by name
Under Insert and Symbols, Special characters takes a name search. b with dot above, b with dot below or b with line below each return a single b.
Step 5: Check the source before you paste
If the text is Irish in roman type, write bh rather than ḃ. If it is Hausa, Fula or IPA, the implosive is ɓ, not ḅ. If it is a Hebrew name on a map, the UN system writes v where scholars write ḇ.
What are all the b letters with accents?
Every b with an accent mark on AccentPad, lowercase then capitals. Tap one to copy it:
What is the Unicode code for ḃ?
ḃ is U+1E03, LATIN SMALL LETTER B WITH DOT ABOVE, added in Unicode 1.1 in 1993. In UTF-8 it is stored as the bytes E1 B8 83, and the table gives every escape a developer needs.
| Code point | U+1E03 |
|---|---|
| Name | LATIN SMALL LETTER B WITH DOT ABOVE |
| Added in | Unicode 1.1 (1993) |
| UTF-8 bytes | E1 B8 83 |
| HTML | ḃ ḃ |
| CSS | \1E03 |
| JavaScript | \u1E03 |
| Python | \u1e03 |
| URL | %E1%B8%83 |
If a page shows ḃ instead of ḃ, its UTF-8 bytes are being read as Windows-1252. Serve the page as UTF-8 (<meta charset="utf-8">) to fix it.
ḃ Ḃ ḅ Ḅ ḇ Ḇ have no Alt code: Windows cannot type them that way.
Need a letter other than ḃ?
Frequently asked questions about b with accent
Is there a b with an acute accent, b́?
Not as one character. Unicode has no precomposed b́, so it is a b followed by U+0301, the combining acute. Our Node.js v26.0.0 test on 2026-10-10 confirmed that NFC leaves the pair as two code points. Wiktionary records b́ in obsolete Lower Sorbian spelling for a soft /bʲ/, now written bj, and in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet for the same palatalized b.
Is Kalabari ḅ the same sound as Hausa ɓ?
Yes, by Wiktionary's transcriptions: both are /ɓ/, the voiced bilabial implosive. They are still different characters. ḅ is a b with a combining dot below, U+1E05, and ɓ is a separate letter with a hook, U+0253, whose capital is Ɓ. Copy the one the language's own spelling uses, because a search for one will not find the other.
Does ḇ stand for a b or a v?
It depends on the source. In the scholarly romanization of Hebrew in Wiktionary's guidelines, ḇ is ב without a dagesh, the letter Modern Israeli Hebrew says as v; the dagesh form is a plain b. Wiktionary's Sindhi entry uses ḇ another way, romanizing the name of ٻ, an implosive /ɓ/, as ḇe.
Can HTML write ḃ, ḅ or ḇ by name?
No, only by number. Markup gets ḃ from ḃ, ḅ from ḅ and ḇ from ḇ. Each capital is one code point below its small letter, so Ḃ, Ḅ and Ḇ are Ḃ, Ḅ and Ḇ. The hooked ɓ of Hausa is ɓ, from a different block.
What does Unicode's names list say about these letters?
Almost nothing. It files ḃ under Irish Gaelic, old orthography, and gives ḅ and ḇ only their decompositions: b plus U+0323, the combining dot below, and b plus U+0331, the combining macron below. So the line under ḇ is technically a macron below. The names list names no language for either letter.