Breve
Encyclopedia
A breve (ˈbriːv, ˈbʁɛv; from the Latin
brevis "short, brief") is a diacritic
al mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It resembles the caron
(i.e. wedge or háček in Czech
), but is rounded, while the caron has a sharp tip. Compare Ǎ ǎ Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ǒ ǒ Ǔ ǔ (caron) with Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ (breve).
¯ which indicates long vowels, in academic transcription. It is often used this way in dictionaries and textbooks of Latin
, Ancient 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.)
In the Cyrillic alphabet
, a breve is used for Й
(a semivowel
I). In Belarusian
, it is used for both the Cyrillic Ў (semivowel U) and in the Latin (Łacinka) Ŭ. Ў was also used in Cyrillic Uzbek
under the Soviet Union
. The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet uses a breve for Ӂ (the equivalent of G before E or I in the Latin script). In Chuvash
, a breve is used for Cyrillic letters (A-breve) and (E-breve). Note that traditional Cyrillic breve differs in shape from Latin, being thicker on the edges of the curve and thinner in the middle. In Roman types the shape becomes "ears"-like.
In Esperanto
it is used above the U to form a non-syllabic
U, similar to English W in sound.
In the transcription of Sinhala, the breve over m or n indicates a prenasalized consonant
, e.g. n̆da is used to represent [ⁿda].
Note that Pinyin
uses the caron
, not the breve, to indicate the third tone
of Mandarin Chinese; the breve cannot be used as a substitute in computer environments because Unicode
does not provide an equivalent of ǚ with a breve.
and HTML
code (decimal numeric character reference
) for breve characters.
In LaTeX the controls \u{o} and \breve{o} puts a breve over the letter o.
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
brevis "short, brief") is a diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
al mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It resembles the caron
Caron
A caron or háček , also known as a wedge, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, is a diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate present or historical palatalization, iotation, or postalveolar pronunciation in the orthography of some Baltic, Slavic, Finno-Lappic, and other languages.It looks...
(i.e. wedge or háček in Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
), but is rounded, while the caron has a sharp tip. Compare Ǎ ǎ Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ǒ ǒ Ǔ ǔ (caron) with Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ (breve).
Length
The breve sign indicates a short vowel, as opposed to the macronMacron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
¯ which indicates long vowels, in academic transcription. It is often used this way in dictionaries and textbooks of Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
and some other languages, such as Tuareg
Tuareg languages
Tuareg is a Berber language or family of very closely related languages and dialects spoken by the Tuareg Berbers, in large parts of Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso, with a few speakers, the Kinnin, in Chad.- Description :Other Berber languages and Tamashaq are quite mutually...
. (However, there is a frequent convention of indicating only – but all – the long vowels: it is then understood that a vowel with no macron
Macron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
is short.)
In the Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
, a breve is used for Й
Short I
Short I is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is made of the Cyrillic letter И with a breve.Short I represents the palatal approximant , like the pronunciation of ⟨y⟩ in toy....
(a semivowel
Semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
I). In Belarusian
Belarusian language
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...
, it is used for both the Cyrillic Ў (semivowel U) and in the Latin (Łacinka) Ŭ. Ў was also used in Cyrillic Uzbek
Uzbek language
Uzbek is a Turkic language and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has about 25.5 million native speakers, and it is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia...
under the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet uses a breve for Ӂ (the equivalent of G before E or I in the Latin script). In Chuvash
Chuvash language
Chuvash is a Turkic language spoken in central Russia, primarily in the Chuvash Republic and adjacent areas. It is the only surviving member of the Oghur branch of Turkic languages....
, a breve is used for Cyrillic letters (A-breve) and (E-breve). Note that traditional Cyrillic breve differs in shape from Latin, being thicker on the edges of the curve and thinner in the middle. In Roman types the shape becomes "ears"-like.
In Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
it is used above the U to form a non-syllabic
Semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
U, similar to English W in sound.
In the transcription of Sinhala, the breve over m or n indicates a prenasalized consonant
Prenasalized consonant
Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent that behave phonologically like single consonants. The reasons for considering these sequences to be single consonants is in their behavior, not in their actual composition...
, e.g. n̆da is used to represent [ⁿda].
Other uses
In other languages, it is used for other purposes.- In RomanianRomanian languageRomanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
it is used above the A to represent the schwa (ə)SchwaIn linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
vowel, as in măr (apple). - G-breve appears in the AzerbaijaniAzerbaijani languageAzerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
, TatarTatar alphabetTwo scripts are currently used for the Tatar language: Cyrillic and Latin.-Introduction:While a Tatar version of the Latin alphabet called Jaŋalif had been in use during the 1930s, there is controversy in the matter of Latin-based Tatar alphabet for İdel-Ural Tatar. One dimension of the...
, and TurkishTurkish languageTurkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
alphabets. In Turkish, Ğ/ğ lengthens the preceding vowel. It is thus placed between two vowels and is silent in standard Turkish, but may be pronounced [ɣ] in some regional dialects or varieties closer to Ottoman TurkishOttoman Turkish languageThe Ottoman Turkish language or Ottoman language is the variety of the Turkish language that was used for administrative and literary purposes in the Ottoman Empire. It borrows extensively from Arabic and Persian, and was written in a variant of the Perso-Arabic script...
. - The breve, together with circumflexCircumflexThe circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
and hornHorn (diacritic)The horn is a diacritic mark attached to the top right corner of the letters o and u in the Vietnamese alphabet to give ơ and ư, unrounded variants of the vowel represented by the basic letter...
, are used in the Vietnamese languageVietnamese languageVietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
to represent additional vowels. - The McCune-ReischauerMcCune-ReischauerMcCune–Reischauer romanization is one of the two most widely used Korean language romanization systems, along with the Revised Romanization of Korean, which replaced McCune–Reischauer as the official romanization system in South Korea in 2000...
Romanization of the Korean hangulHangulHangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
script uses breves, not carons, over o and u to indicate the vowels ㅓ (ŏ) and ㅡ (ŭ). - H-breve belowHH .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts....
is used to transliterate the Arabic character Ḫāʾ in DIN 31635DIN 31635DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft as modified by the International Orientalist Congress 1936 in Rome...
. It is also used to transliterate AkkadianAkkadian languageAkkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
, Hittite cuneiformHittite cuneiformHittite cuneiform is the implementation of cuneiform script used in writing the Hittite language. The surviving corpus of Hittite texts is preserved in cuneiform on clay tablets dates to the 2nd millennium BC ....
, and Egyptian hieroglyphsEgyptian hieroglyphsEgyptian hieroglyphs were a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that combined logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...
. - On German-languageGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
maps, a breve is often used in abbreviated placenames which end in , short for -burg, a common suffix originally meaning ‘castle’. This prevents misinterpretation as -berg, another common suffix in placenames (meaning ‘mountain’). Thus, e.g., stands for FreiburgFreiburgFreiburg im Breisgau is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. In the extreme south-west of the country, it straddles the Dreisam river, at the foot of the Schlossberg. Historically, the city has acted as the hub of the Breisgau region on the western edge of the Black Forest in the Upper Rhine Plain...
, not FreibergFreiberg-Places:* Freiberg, Saxony, Germany** Freiberg , Saxony, Germany** Freiberg subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp* Freiberg am Neckar, Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany...
.
Note that Pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
uses the caron
Caron
A caron or háček , also known as a wedge, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, is a diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate present or historical palatalization, iotation, or postalveolar pronunciation in the orthography of some Baltic, Slavic, Finno-Lappic, and other languages.It looks...
, not the breve, to indicate the third tone
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
of Mandarin Chinese; the breve cannot be used as a substitute in computer environments because Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
does not provide an equivalent of ǚ with a breve.
Encoding
UnicodeUnicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
and HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
code (decimal numeric character reference
Numeric character reference
A numeric character reference is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-related markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represent a single character from the Universal Character Set of Unicode...
) for breve characters.
| Name | Letter | Unicode | HTML |
|---|---|---|---|
| breve (single) | ̆ | U+02D8 | ˘ |
| combining Combining character In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks .... breve |
̆ | U+0306 | ̆ |
| combining Combining character In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks .... breve below |
̮ | U+032E | ̮ |
| combining Combining character In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks .... inverted breve below |
̯ | U+032F | ̯ |
| Latin | |||
| A-breve A A is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :... |
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 |
| O-breve | Ŏ ŏ |
U+014E U+014F |
Ŏ ŏ |
| U-breve U U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details.... |
Ŭ ŭ |
U+016C U+016D |
Ŭ ŭ |
| Azerbaijani, Tatar, Turkish | |||
| G-breve G G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,... |
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 Short I Short I is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It is made of the Cyrillic letter И with a breve.Short I represents the palatal approximant , like the pronunciation of ⟨y⟩ in toy.... |
Й й |
U+0419 U+0439 |
Й й |
| short U | 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 |
| Greek | |||
| alpha Alpha (letter) Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 1. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Aleph... with vrachy |
Ᾰ ᾰ |
U+1FB8 U+1FB0 |
Ᾰ ᾰ |
| iota Iota Iota is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 10. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Yodh . Letters that arose from this letter include the Roman I and J and the Cyrillic І , Yi , Je , and iotified letters .Iota represents... with vrachy |
Ῐ ῐ |
U+1FD8 U+1FD0 |
Ῐ ῐ |
| upsilon Upsilon Upsilon is the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 400. It is derived from the Phoenician waw. The name of the letter is pronounced in Modern Greek, and in English , , or... with vrachy |
Ῠ ῠ |
U+1FE8 U+1FE0 |
Ῠ ῠ |
| Arabic, Hittite, Akkadian, Egyptian transliteration | |||
| H-breve below H H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts.... |
Ḫ ḫ |
U+1E2A U+1E2B |
Ḫ ḫ |
In LaTeX the controls \u{o} and \breve{o} puts a breve over the letter o.