A ring diacritic may appear above or below letters. It may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in various contexts.
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| Å | å |
| Ǻ | ǻ |
| Ḁ | ḁ |
| Ů | ů |
| W̊ | ẘ |
| Y̊ | ẙ |
| Q̊ | q̊ |
| X̊ | x̊ |
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The Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Walloon character Å (å) is typically seen as an A with a ring above. However, in the languages in which it is used, the letter is seen as a distinct symbol, rather than an A with a diacritic. The letter Å is the symbol of the unit ångström, named after the Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Ångström.
Other characters with a ring diacritic are Ů and ů (a Latin U with ring above). These characters are used in the Czech language (where the ring is known as a kroužek), together with háček and čárka (like an acute accent) above many other letters. This vowel "ů" shows how the pronunciation of various words evolved during the centuries. For example, the word for "horse" used to be written kóň, which evolved, along with pronunciation, into kuoň. Ultimately, the vowel [o] disappeared completely, and in its modern form kůň it has become the ring above "u". The letter ů now has the same pronunciation as the letter ú (long [uː]), but changes to a short o in declension (e.g. kůň→koně), thus showing the historical evolution of the language. For historical reasons, ů can never be the first letter of the word; however, ú is almost always the first letter of the word or the word root. These characters are used also in Steuer's Silesian alphabet.
The ring is also used in Bolognese (a dialect of Emiliano-Romagnolo language) to distinguish the sound /ɑ/ (å) from /a/ (a).
Ring above has been used in Lithuanian Cyrillic alphabet promoted by Russian authorities at the last quarter of 19th century in the letter У̊ / у̊, used to represent the /wɔ/ diphthong (now written uo in contemporary Lithuanian orthography).
Many more characters can be created in Unicode using the 'combining ring above' U+030A, including the above mentioned у̊ (Cyrillic у with ring above) or even ń̊ (n with acute and ring above). The standalone ring above symbol has the codepoint U+02DA.
Unicode encodes "combining ring below" at U+0325 ◌̥ combining ring below
The diacritic is used in IPA to indicate voicelessness, and in Indo-European studies or in Sanskrit transliteration (IAST) to indicate syllabicity of r, l, m, n etc. (e.g. r̥ corresponding to IPA [ɹ̩]).
Examples:
Half rings also exist as diacritic marks, these are characters U+0351 ͑ combining left half ring above and U+0357 ͗ combining left half ring below. These characters may be used in the International Phonetic Alphabet, denoting roundedness. They are here given with the lowercase a: a͑ and a͗.
Other, similar signs are in use in Armenian: the U+0559 ՙ left half ring above, and the Armenian comma or U+055A ՚ right half ring above.
The ring as a diacritic mark should not be confused with the dot above or comma above diacritic marks, with the combing o above U+0366 ͦ combining latin small letter o, or with the degree sign °.
| 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 | ||
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Letters using ring sign ( ◌̊ ◌̥ )
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| Åå | Ůů | W̊ẘ | Y̊ẙ | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Related
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