Ring (diacritic)
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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| Ring | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Å | å |
| Ǻ | ǻ |
| Å̂ | å̂ |
| Å̃ | å̃ |
| Å̄ | å̄ |
| Å̆ | å̆ |
| Ā̊ | ā̊ |
| Ą̊ | ą̊ |
| Å̱ | å̱ |
| Ḁ | ḁ |
| D̊ | d̊ |
| E̊ | e̊ |
| E̊̄ | e̊̄ |
| G̊ | g̊ |
| I̊ | i̊ |
| J̊ | j̊ |
| O̊ | o̊ |
| Ō̊ | ō̊ |
| S̊ | s̊ |
| S̥ | s̥ |
| Ů | ů |
| Ů́ | ů́ |
| Ů̃ | ů̃ |
| Ũ̊ | ũ̊ |
| Ū̊ | ū̊ |
| V̊ | v̊ |
| L̥ | l̥ |
| L̥̄ | l̥̄ |
| R̥ | r̥ |
| R̥̄ | r̥̄ |
| W̊ | ẘ |
| Y̊ | ẙ |
| Q̊ | q̊ |
| X̊ | x̊ |
Ring above
In Unicode, the above encoding is: U+030A ◌̊ COMBINING RING ABOVE (HTML ̊).
Though the Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Walloon character Å (å) is derived from an A with a ring, it is considered a distinct letter in those languages. The letter Å is the symbol of the unit ångström, named after the Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Ångström.
The character Ů (ů; a Latin U with ring above, or kroužek in Czech) is a grapheme in the Czech language preserved for historic reasons, which identifies a vowel shift. 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 the uo evolved into ů, modern form kůň. The letter ů now has the same pronunciation as the letter ú (long [uː]), but changes to a short o when a word is morphed (e.g. nom. kůň → gen. koně, nom. dům → gen. domu), thus showing the historical evolution of the language. Ů cannot occur in initial position, however, ú occurs almost exclusively in initial position or at the beginning of a word root in a compound. These characters are used also in Steuer's Silesian alphabet. The [uo] pronunciation has prevailed in some Moravian dialects, as well as in the Slovak language, which uses the letter ô instead of ů.
The ring is used in Bolognese (a dialect of Emiliano-Romagnolo language) to distinguish the sound /ɑ/ (å) from /a/ (a).
ů has been used in Old Lithuanian in Lithuania Minor from the 16th till the beginning of the 20th century and for a shorter time in 16th-century Lithuania Major for diphthong [uo].
The ring has been used in the Lithuanian Cyrillic alphabet promoted by Russian authorities in the last quarter of the 19th century with the letter У̊ / у̊ used to represent the /wɔ/ diphthong (now written uo in Lithuanian orthography).
Ring upon e (e̊) is used by certain dialectologists of the Walloon language (especially Jean-Jacques Gaziaux) to note the /ə/ vowel typically replacing /i/ and /y/ in the Brabant province central Walloon dialects. The difficulty of type-writing it has led some writers to prefer ë for the same sound.
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 ń̊ (n with acute and ring above). The standalone ring above symbol has the codepoint U+02DA.
Although similar in appearance, it is not to be confused with the Japanese handakuten (゜ U+309C), a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should instead be pronounced with [p].
Ring below
Unicode encodes the 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:
- U+1E00 Ḁ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING BELOW
- U+1E01 ḁ LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH RING BELOW
Half rings
Half rings also exist as diacritic marks, these are characters U+0351 ◌͑ COMBINING LEFT HALF RING ABOVE and U+0357 ◌͗ COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING ABOVE. 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 ARMENIAN MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING and the U+055A ◌՚ ARMENIAN APOSTROPHE.
Unicode supports U+031C ◌̜ COMBINING LEFT HALF RING BELOW and U+0339 ◌̹ COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING BELOW.
Similar marks
The ring as a diacritic mark should not be confused with the dot or U+0366 ◌ͦ COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER O diacritic marks, or with the degree sign °.
The half ring as a diacritic mark should not be confused with the comma or ogonek diacritic marks.