| Char: | ◌̆ |
| Breve | |
A breve (less often, neuter form of the Latin Latin: brevis "short, brief") is the diacritic mark
, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: βραχύ. It resembles the caron (, the wedge or Czech: háček in Czech, Slovak: mäkčeň in Slovak) but is rounded, in contrast to the angular tip of the caron. In many forms of Latin, is used for a shorter, softer variant of a vowel, such as "Ĭ", where the sound is nearly identical to the English /i/. (See: Latin IPA)| Caron | Ǎ ǎ Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ǒ ǒ Ǔ ǔ Y̌ y̌ |
|---|
The breve sign indicates a short vowel, as opposed to the macron (
), which indicates long vowels, in academic transcription. It is often used that way in dictionaries and textbooks of Latin, Ancient Greek, Tuareg and other languages. However, there is a frequent convention of indicating only the long vowels. It is then understood that a vowel with no macron is short. If the vowel length is unknown, a breve as well as a macron are used in historical linguistics (Ā̆ ā̆ Ē̆ ē̆ Ī̆ ī̆ Ō̆ ō̆ Ū̆ ū̆ Ȳ̆ ȳ̆).In Cyrillic script, a breve is used for Й. 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 on Ӂ to represent a voiced postalveolar affricate pronounced as //d͡ʒ// (corresponding to (g) before a front vowel in the Latin script for Moldovan). In Chuvash, a breve is used for Cyrillic letters Ӑ (A-breve) and Ӗ (E-breve). In Itelmen orthography, it is used for Ӑ, О̆ and Ў. The traditional Cyrillic breve differs in shape and is thicker on the edges of the curve and thinner in the middle, as opposed to the Latin one,[1] but the Unicode encoding is the same.In Emilian, ĕ ŏ are used to represent pronounced as /[ɛ, ɔ]/ in dialects where also long pronounced as /[ɛː, ɔː]/ occur.
In Esperanto, u with breve (ŭ) represents a non-syllabic u in diphthongs pronounced as /link/, analogous to Belarusian ў.
In the transcription of Sinhala, the breve over an m or an n indicates a prenasalized consonant; for example, n̆da is used to represent pronounced as /[ⁿda]/.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, a breve over a phonetic symbol is used to indicate extra-shortness.
In other languages, it is used for other purposes.
Traditional editions of Spanish vocal sheet music use the 'breve below' to indicate elision. Modern editions tend to use a (freestanding) underscore.
Unicode and HTML code (decimal numeric character reference) for breve characters.
| Name | Letter | Unicode | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Breve (spacing) | |||
| Combining breve | |||
| Combining breve below | |||
| Combining double breve | |||
| Combining double breve below | |||
| Breve with inverted breve (spacing) | |||
| Latin | |||
| A-breve | Ă ă | ||
| E-breve | Ĕ ĕ | ||
| I-breve | Ĭ ĭ | ||
| O-breve | Ŏ ŏ | ||
| U-breve | Ŭ ŭ | ||
| Azerbaijani, Tatar, Turkish | |||
| G-breve | Ğ ğ | ||
| Vietnamese | |||
| A-sắc-breve | Ắ ắ | ||
| A-huyền-breve | Ằ ằ | ||
| A-hỏi-breve | Ẳ ẳ | ||
| A-ngã-breve | Ẵ ẵ | ||
| A-nặng-breve | Ặ ặ | ||
| Cyrillic | |||
| A-breve | Ӑ ӑ | ||
| Ye-breve | Ӗ ӗ | ||
| Zhe-breve | Ӂ ӂ | ||
| Short I | Й й | ||
| O-breve | О̆ о̆ | | |
| Short U | Ў ў | ||
| Greek | |||
| Alpha with brachy | Ᾰ ᾰ | ||
| Iota with brachy | Ῐ ῐ | ||
| Upsilon with brachy | Ῠ ῠ | ||
| Arabic, Hittite, Akkadian, Egyptian transliteration[3] | |||
| H-breve below | Ḫ ḫ | ||
| Hebrew transliteration | |||
| E-cedilla-breve | Ḝ ḝ | ||
In LaTeX the controls \u and \breve put a breve over the letter o.