Macron
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ā | ā |
| Ē | ē |
| Ḡ | ḡ |
| Ī | ī |
| Ḹ | ḹ |
| Ō | ō |
| Ṝ | ṝ |
| Ū | ū |
| Ǖ | ǖ |
| Ȳ | ȳ |
| Diacritical marks |
|---|
|
accent
breve ( ˘ )
hook / dấu hỏi ( ̉ ) |
| Marks sometimes used as diacritics |
|
apostrophe ( ’ ) |
A macron, from Greek μακρός (makros) meaning "large", is a diacritic ¯ placed over a vowel originally to indicate that the vowel is long. The opposite is a breve ˘, used to indicate a short vowel. These distinctions are usually phonemic.
Contents |
[edit] Length
The following languages or transliteration systems use the macron to mark long vowels:
- Modern dictionaries of classical Greek and Latin, where the macron is sometimes used in conjunction with the breve, which marks short vowels. 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.
- Hawaiian. The macron is called kahakō, and it indicates vowel length, which changes meaning and the placement of stress.
- The Hepburn romanization system of Japanese. Examples: kōtsū (交通) "traffic" as opposed to kotsu (骨) "bone" or "knack" (fig.) The indigenous Japanese kana transcription of 交通, however, is こうつう, which character for character transliterates as koutsuu. Although not standard, this latter system is arguably the most commonly seen on the Internet, next to not marking vowel length at all.
- Latvian. "Ā", "ē", "ī", "ū" are considered separate letters that sort in alphabetical order immediately after "a", "e", "i", "u" respectively. For instance, baznīca comes before bārda in a Latvian dictionary.
- Lithuanian. "Ū" is considered a separate letter but given the same position in collation as the unaccented "u". It marks a long vowel; other long vowels are indicated with an ogonek (which used to indicate nasalization, but no longer does): "ą", "ę", "į", "ų", "o" being always long in Lithuanian words except for some recent loanwords. For the long counterpart of "i", the letter "y" is used.
- Māori. Early writing in Māori did not distinguish vowel length. Some — notably the late Professor Bruce Biggs[1] — have advocated that double vowels be written to mark long vowel sounds (e.g. Maaori), but even he was more concerned that they be marked at all than with the method. However, the Māori Language Commission (Te Taura Whiri o te Reo Māori) advocate macrons be used to designate long vowels. The use of the macron is now widespread in modern Māori writing, though some people fall back on a diaeresis mark instead (e.g. "Mäori" instead of "Māori") when a macron is not available, and this confuses people who are unfamiliar with either. The Māori words for macron are pōtae "hat", or tohuto.
- Modern transcriptions of Old English.
- Latin transliteration of Sanskrit.
[edit] Tone
The following languages or alphabets use the macron to mark tones:
- In the International Phonetic Alphabet, a macron over a vowel indicates a mid-level tone.
- In Pinyin, macrons are used over a, e, i, o, u, ü (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, ǖ) to indicate the first tone of Mandarin Chinese.
[edit] Other uses
- In the French comic books which are hand-lettered all in capitals, the macron replaces the circumflex.
- In some German handwriting styles, a macron is used to distinguish u from n.
- In older handwriting styles, such as the German schrift, the macron over an m or an n meant that the letter was doubled. This continued into print in English in the sixteenth century. Over a u at the end of a word, the macron indicated um as a form of scribal abbreviation.
- In Russian handwriting, a lowercase Т looks like a lowercase m, and a macron is often used to distinguish it from Ш, which looks like a lowercase w. Some writers also underline the letter ш, to further reduce ambiguity.
[edit] Non-diacritical usage
- In medical prescriptions, a macron over a "c" means "with", as an abbreviation for the Latin word "cum".
- In mathematics, and especially statistics the macron is often used to indicate a mean (e.g
as the average value of xi).
[edit] Technical notes
| Upper Case | Lower Case | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Character | HTML Code | Character | HTML Code |
| Ā | Ā | ā | ā |
| Ē | Ē | ē | ē |
| Ī | Ī | ī | ī |
| Ō | Ō | ō | ō |
| Ū | Ū | ū | ū |
| Ǖ | Ǖ | ǖ | ǖ |
| Ȳ | Ȳ | ȳ | ȳ |
In Unicode, "combining macron" is one of the combining diacritical marks, its code is U+0304 (in HTML, ̄ or ̄). This should be distinguished from the "macron" at U+00AF ¯, from the "modifier letter macron" at U+02C9 ˉ and from the combining overline at U+0305 ̅. There are also several precomposed characters; their HTML/Unicode numbers are as in the table to the right. In LaTeX a macron is created with the command "\=" for example: M\=aori.
If the last two rows of the table do not display properly, the row before the last is the letter Uu with diaeresis (Ü ü) and macron, used in pinyin. The final row is the letter Yy with macron, used sometimes in teaching Latin.
[edit] Trivia
- In an episode of The Simpsons, the character Sideshow Bob is seen with tatoos on his fingers, one being "LUV" the other being "HĀT", abbreviations of "Love" and "Hate" due to characters in The Simpsons having only 3 fingers on each hand.
[edit] References
- ^ Yearbook of the Academy Council - 2000, Royal Society of New Zealand
[edit] See also
| The ISO basic Latin alphabet | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp | Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz | |
| history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
[edit] External links
- Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents
- He Kupu o te Rā Information about typing macrons, macron support in email packages, and TXTing macrons.
