| Ipa Symbol: | ◌̆ |
| Ipa Number: | 505 |
| Decimal1: | 774 |
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) uses a breve (IPA| ˘ ) to indicate a speech sound (usually a vowel) with extra-short duration. That is, pronounced as /[ă]/ is a very short vowel with the quality of pronounced as /[a]/. An example from English is the short schwa of the word police pronounced as /[pə̆ˈliˑs]/.[1] This is typical of vowel reduction.
Before the 1989 Kiel Convention, the breve was used for a non-syllabic vowel (that is, part of a diphthong), which is now indicated by an breve placed under the vowel letter, as in eye pronounced as /[aɪ̯]/. It is also sometimes used for any flap consonants missing dedicated symbols in the IPA, since a flap is in effect a very brief stop.