>   match="*[matches(., '^[ɐ-�]')]">
>
> does it and selects all elements starting with a 'special character'!
> thanks frank

that only selects ones up to 65533, and a lot of math characters are
higher than that: there's a whole block starting at 119808 (hex 1d400) to
120831 (hex 1d7ff)  script A, 𝒜 for example is character 119964.

You might be better writing this as

*[not(matches(., '^[-ɏ]'))]

would be nicer, wouldn't it?  It might be more efficient to substring
out the first character, rather that select the first from the
resulting sequence...

cheers
andrew