Breve

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Breve (disambiguation).

Ă	ă
Ĕ	ĕ
Ğ	ğ
Ḫ	ḫ
Ĭ	ĭ
Ŏ	ŏ
Ŭ	ŭ

Diacritical marks
accent acute accent ( ˊ ) double acute accent ( ˝ ) grave accent ( ˋ ) breve ( ˘ ) caron / háček ( ˇ ) cedilla ( ¸ ) circumflex ( ˆ ) diaeresis / umlaut ( ¨ ) dot ( · ) anunaasika ( ˙ ) anusvara ( ̣ ) chandrabindu ( ँ ঁ ઁ ଁ ఁ ) hook / dấu hỏi ( ̉ ) horn / dấu móc macron ( ˉ ) ogonek ( ˛ ) ring / kroužek ( ˚ ) rough breathing / spiritus asper ( ῾ ) smooth breathing / spiritus lenis ( ᾿ )
Marks sometimes used as diacritics
apostrophe ( ’ ) bar ( \| ) colon ( : ) comma ( , ) hyphen ( ˗ ) tilde ( ˜ ) titlo ( ҃ )

Diacritical marks

accent

acute accent ( ˊ )

double acute accent ( ˝ )

grave accent ( ˋ )

breve ( ˘ )
caron / háček ( ˇ )
cedilla ( ¸ )
circumflex ( ˆ )
diaeresis / umlaut ( ¨ )
dot ( · )

anunaasika ( ˙ )

anusvara ( ̣ )

chandrabindu ( ँ ঁ ઁ ଁ ఁ )

hook / dấu hỏi ( ̉ )
horn / dấu móc
macron ( ˉ )
ogonek ( ˛ )
ring / kroužek ( ˚ )
rough breathing / spiritus asper ( ῾ )
smooth breathing / spiritus lenis ( ᾿ )

Marks sometimes used as diacritics

apostrophe ( ’ )
bar ( | )
colon ( : )
comma ( , )
hyphen ( ˗ )
tilde ( ˜ )
titlo ( ҃ )

A breve (Latin brevis "short, brief") is a diacritical mark ˘, shaped like a little round cup, designed to indicate a short vowel, as opposed to the macron ¯ which indicates long vowels. It is often used this way in dictionaries and textbooks of Latin, old 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.) It looks similar to caron or háček, but the caron has a sharp tip, whilst the breve is rounded. Compare Ǎ ǎ Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ǒ ǒ Ǔ ǔ (caron) with Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ (breve).

In the Cyrillic alphabet, a breve is used for Й (short I). In Belarusian, it is used for both the Cyrillic Ў (U short) and Latin (Łacinka) Ŭ. Ў was also used in Cyrillic Uzbek under the Soviet Union. In the Chuvash a breve is used for Cyrillic letters Ӑ (A-breve) and Ӗ (Ye-breve).

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). In Esperanto it can be used above the U to form a non-syllabic U, similar to English W in sound. G-breve appears in the Azerbaijani, Tatar, and Turkish alphabets.

Breve, together with circumflex and horn, are used in the Vietnamese language to represent additional vowels.

Interlingua has no diacritical marks, so the breve appears only in an occasional loanword. Note that pinyin uses the caron, not the breve, to indicate the third tone of Mandarin Chinese. McCune-Reischauer uses breves, not carons, over o and u to indicate hangul ㅓ and ㅡ.

[edit] Encoding breves

Unicode and HTML numeric entities for breve letters

Name	Letter	Unicode	HTML Entity
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
Ŏ-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
U short	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

[edit] See also

Caron
Macron

The ISO basic Latin alphabet
Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp	Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz
history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters