Breve
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A breve (English: /ˈbriːv/, French: [ˈbʁɛv]; from the Latin brevis "short, brief") is a diacritical mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It resembles the caron (i.e. wedge or háček in Czech), but is rounded, while the caron has a sharp tip. Compare Ǎ ǎ Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ǒ ǒ Ǔ ǔ (caron) with Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ (breve).
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[edit] Length
The breve sign indicates a short vowel, as opposed to the macron ¯ which indicates long vowels, in academic transcription. It is often used this way in dictionaries and textbooks of Latin, Ancient Greek and some other languages, such as Tuareg. (However, there is a frequent convention of indicating only – but all – the long vowels: it is then understood that a vowel with no macron is short.)
In Cyrillic script, a breve is used for Й (a semivowel I). In Belarusian, it is used for both the Cyrillic Ў (semivowel U) and in the Latin (Łacinka) Ŭ. Ў was also used in Cyrillic Uzbek under the Soviet Union. The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet uses a breve for Ӂ (the equivalent of G before E or I in the Latin script). In Chuvash, a breve is used for Cyrillic letters Ӑ (A-breve) and Ӗ (E-breve). Note that traditional Cyrillic breve differs in shape from Latin, being thicker on the edges of the curve and thinner in the middle. In Roman types the shape becomes "ears"-like.[1]
In Esperanto it is used above the U to form a non-syllabic U, similar to English W in sound.
In the transcription of Sinhala, the breve over m or n indicates a prenasalized consonant, e.g. n̆da is used to represent [ⁿda].
[edit] Other uses
In other languages, it is used for other purposes.
- In Romanian it is used above the A to represent the schwa (ə) vowel, as in măr (apple).
- G-breve appears in the Azerbaijani, Tatar, and Turkish alphabets. In Turkish, Ğ/ğ lengthens the preceding vowel. It is thus placed between two vowels and is silent in standard Turkish, but may be pronounced [ɰ] in some regional dialects or varieties closer to Ottoman Turkish.
- The breve, together with circumflex and horn, are used in the Vietnamese language to represent additional vowels.
- The McCune-Reischauer Romanization of the Korean hangul script uses breves, not carons, over o and u to indicate the vowels ㅓ (ŏ) and ㅡ (ŭ).[2]
- H-breve below Ḫ ḫ is used to transliterate the Arabic character Ḫāʾ (خ) in DIN 31635. It is also used to transliterate Akkadian, Hittite cuneiform, and Egyptian hieroglyphs.
- On German-language maps, a breve is often used in abbreviated placenames which end in -b̆g., short for -burg, a common suffix originally meaning ‘castle’. This prevents misinterpretation as -berg, another common suffix in placenames (meaning ‘mountain’). Thus, e.g., Freib̆g. stands for Freiburg, not Freiberg.
Note that Pinyin uses the caron, not the breve, to indicate the third tone of Mandarin Chinese; the breve cannot be used as a substitute in computer environments because Unicode does not provide an equivalent of ǚ with a breve.[3]
[edit] Encoding
Unicode and HTML code (decimal numeric character reference) for breve characters.
| Name | Letter | Unicode | HTML |
|---|---|---|---|
| breve (single) | ̆ | U+02D8 | ˘ |
| combining breve | ̆ | U+0306 | ̆ |
| combining breve below | ̮ | U+032E | ̮ |
| combining inverted breve below | ̯ | U+032F | ̯ |
| Latin | |||
| A-breve | Ă ă |
U+0102 U+0103 |
Ă ă |
| E-breve | Ĕ ĕ |
U+0114 U+0115 |
Ĕ ĕ |
| I-breve | Ĭ ĭ |
U+012C U+012D |
Ĭ ĭ |
| O-breve | Ŏ ŏ |
U+014E U+014F |
Ŏ ŏ |
| U-breve | Ŭ ŭ |
U+016C U+016D |
Ŭ ŭ |
| Azerbaijani, Tatar, Turkish | |||
| G-breve | Ğ ğ |
U+011E U+011F |
Ğ ğ |
| Vietnamese | |||
| A-sắc-breve | Ắ ắ |
U+1EAE U+1EAF |
Ắ ắ |
| A-huyền-breve | Ằ ằ |
U+1EB0 U+1EB1 |
Ằ ằ |
| A-hỏi-breve | Ẳ ẳ |
U+1EB2 U+1EB3 |
Ẳ ẳ |
| A-ngã-breve | Ẵ ẵ |
U+1EB4 U+1EB5 |
Ẵ ẵ |
| A-nặng-breve | Ặ ặ |
U+1EB6 U+1EB7 |
Ặ ặ |
| Cyrillic | |||
| short I | Й й |
U+0419 U+0439 |
Й й |
| short U | Ў ў |
U+040E U+045E |
Ў ў |
| A-breve | Ӑ ӑ |
U+04D0 U+04D1 |
Ӑ ӑ |
| Ye-breve | Ӗ ӗ |
U+04D6 U+04D7 |
Ӗ ӗ |
| Greek | |||
| alpha with vrachy | Ᾰ ᾰ |
U+1FB8 U+1FB0 |
Ᾰ ᾰ |
| iota with vrachy | Ῐ ῐ |
U+1FD8 U+1FD0 |
Ῐ ῐ |
| upsilon with vrachy | Ῠ ῠ |
U+1FE8 U+1FE0 |
Ῠ ῠ |
| Arabic, Hittite, Akkadian, Egyptian transliteration | |||
| H-breve below | Ḫ ḫ |
U+1E2A U+1E2B |
Ḫ ḫ |
In LaTeX the controls \u{o} and \breve{o} puts a breve over the letter o.
[edit] Notes
- ^ "Бреве кириллическое, «кратка» [Cyrillic breve ("kratka")]" (in Russian). ParaType. http://fonts.ru/help/term/terms.asp?code=591.
- ^ For example, that word 한글 han-geul is Romanized in McCune-Reischauer as han'gŭl. The spelling han-geul is based on South Korea's Revised Romanization of Korean adopted in 2000 in part for ease in computer use, not on McCune-Reischauer. It is common, for convenience, to omit writing all diacritical marks in McCune Reishchauer including breves, in which case the word is spelled hangul not han'gŭl. North Korea uses a variant of McCune-Reischauer that also utilizes breves for those two vowels.
- ^ "Characters Ordered by Unicode". World Wide Web Consortium. http://www.w3.org/TR/MathML2/bycodes.html. Retrieved 21 April 2011.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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Letters using breve sign ( ◌̆ )
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| Ăă | Ĕĕ | Ğğ | Ĭ ĭ | Ŏŏ | Ŭŭ | |||||||||||||||||||||
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