It was formerly used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent [ɪ] (the vowel in English "bit"). It was replaced by a small capital I (ɪ) in 1989, but it can still be found in use in some later works. Other variations are used for phonetic transcription:[1]⟨ᵼ⟩, ⟨ᶥ⟩.
Ɩ has been adopted as a letter in the alphabets of some African languages, such as Gurunɛ, Kabiyé or Mossi. Its capital form has a hook to distinguish it from capital I. The accented italic form ɩ is very often indistinguishable from the italic letter small I i in serif fonts.