Ê

Ê, ê (e-circumflex) is a letter in the Friulan, Kurdish, Gagauz, and Vietnamese languages. The letter also appears in Afrikaans, French, Portuguese, Welsh, and Albanian dialects as a variant of the letter "e", as well as being used in certain Chinese and Ukrainian transliteration systems. It is also used in Dutch but only in loanwords, mostly from French. Some examples are: enquête, fête, tête-à-tête.

Usage in various languages

Afrikaans

Ê is not considered a separate letter in Afrikaans, but rather, as aforementioned, a variation of the letter "e".

Chinese

In Pinyin, ê represents /ɛ/. It corresponds to ㄝ in zhuyin symbol. The circumflex is only present if ê is written alone, e.g. ề (诶; 誒; "eh!"); elsewhere, it is written as e, e.g. xué (学; 學; "to learn").

In Pe̍h-ōe-jī, ê is the fifth tone of e, e.g. ê (的; possessive, adjectival suffix).

Dutch

In Dutch, ê is used to change the pronunciation of e from /ə/ to /ɛ/. It only appears in words taken over from the French language.

French

In French, ê changes the pronunciation of e from /ə/ to /ɛ/. Diacritics are not usually considered to be letters of the French alphabet.

Friulan

Ê is used to represent the /e/ and /ɛː/ sounds.

Kurdish

Ê is the 7th letter of the Kurdish Kurmanji alphabet and represents /e/.

Portuguese

In Portuguese, ê is used to mark a stressed /e/ in words whose stressed syllable is in an unpredictable location within the word, as in "dê" (give!) and "pêssego" (peach). Where the location of the stressed syllable is predictable, the circumflex accent is not used. Ê /e/ contrasts with é, pronounced /ɛ/.

Ukrainian

Ê is used in the ISO 9:1995 system of Ukrainian transliteration as the letter Є.

Vietnamese

Ê is the 9th letter of the Vietnamese alphabet and represents /e/. In Vietnamese phonology, diacritics can be added to form the following five forms to represent five tones of ê.

• Ề ề
• Ể ể
• Ễ ễ
• Ế ế
• Ệ ệ

Welsh

In Welsh, ê is used to represent long stressed e [eː] when, without the circumflex, the vowel would be pronounced as short [ɛ], e.g.. llên [ɬeːn] "literature", as opposed to llen [ɬɛn] "curtain", or gêm [ɡeːm] "game", rather than gem [ɡɛm] "gem, jewel". It is useful in writing borrowed words with final stress, e.g. apêl [apˈeːl] "appeal".

Character mappings

Unicode encoded 5 pairs of precomposed characters (Ề / ề, Ể / ể, Ễ / ễ, Ế / ế, Ệ / ệ) for the five tones of ê in Vietnamese. Two pairs of the five (Ế / ế and Ề / ề) can also be used as the second and fourth tones of ê in Pinyin. The first and third tones of ê in Pinyin have to be represented by combining diacritical marks, like ê̄ (ê̄) and ê̌ (ê̌).

See also

• Circumflex