Circumflex
Encyclopedia
The 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 (bent around)—a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη (perispōménē
). The character is also used in mathematics
, where it is typically called hat.
For actually adding the diacritic to a base letter (as in ), Unicode
has . In addition, the ISO-8859-1 character encoding includes the precomposed character
s â, ê, î, ô, û (as well as their respective capital forms), and dozens more are available in Unicode.
There is a similar but larger character, , which is also included in ASCII
but often referred to as caret
instead. It is, however, unsuitable for use as a diacritic, as it is a spacing character. Another spacing circumflex character in Unicode is the smaller , mainly used in phonetic
notations.
of Ancient Greek
, the circumflex marked long
vowel
s that were pronounced with high and then falling pitch. Its shape was originally a combination of the acute
and grave accent
s (^), but later a variant similar to the tilde
(~) was also used.
The circumflex marked a syllable
contracted
from two vowels: an acute-accented vowel and a non-accented vowel. Because all non-accented syllables were once marked with a grave accent, the contracted syllable was marked by the acute and grave combined. This combination became the circumflex.
The term is also used to describe similar tonal accents that result from combining two vowels in related languages such as Sanskrit and Latin.
Since Modern Greek
has a stress accent
instead of a pitch accent, the circumflex has been replaced with an acute accent
in the modern monotonic orthography.
in the orthography
or transliteration
of several languages.
of a word in some languages:
As ever, there are exceptions, such as
of a function ƒ is often denoted by
.
In the notation of sets, a hat above an element signifies that the element was removed from the set.
In vector notation, a hat above a letter indicates a unit vector (a dimensionless vector with a magnitude
of 1). For instance, î stands for a unit vector in the direction of the x-axis.
In statistics
, the hat is used to denote an estimator
or an estimated value, as opposed to its theoretical counterpart. For example, in errors and residuals
, the hat in ε̂ indicates an observable estimate (the residuals) of an unobservable quantity called ε (the statistical errors). It is read x-hat or x-roof, where x represents the character under the hat.
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...
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
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...
circumflexus (bent around)—a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη (perispōménē
Perispomenon
In Ancient Greek grammar, a perispomenon is a word with a circumflex accent on the last syllable. A properispomenon is a word with a circumflex on the second-to-last syllable. theoû "of a god" prâxis "business"...
). The character is also used in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, where it is typically called hat.
For actually adding the diacritic to a base letter (as in ), 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...
has . In addition, the ISO-8859-1 character encoding includes the precomposed character
Precomposed character
A precomposed character is a Unicode entity that can be defined as a combination of two or more other characters. A precomposed character may typically represent a letter with a diacritical mark, such as é...
s â, ê, î, ô, û (as well as their respective capital forms), and dozens more are available in Unicode.
There is a similar but larger character, , which is also included in ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
but often referred to as caret
Caret
Caret usually refers to the spacing symbol ^ in ASCII and other character sets. In Unicode, however, the corresponding character is , whereas the Unicode character named caret is actually a similar but lowered symbol: ....
instead. It is, however, unsuitable for use as a diacritic, as it is a spacing character. Another spacing circumflex character in Unicode is the smaller , mainly used in phonetic
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
notations.
Pitch
In the polytonic orthographyGreek diacritics
Greek orthography has used a variety of diacritics starting in the Hellenistic period. The complex polytonic orthography notates Ancient Greek phonology...
of 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...
, the circumflex marked long
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s that were pronounced with high and then falling pitch. Its shape was originally a combination of the acute
Acute accent
The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
and grave accent
Grave accent
The grave accent is a diacritical mark used in written Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Dutch, French, Greek , Italian, Mohawk, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Vietnamese, Welsh, Romansh, and other languages.-Greek:The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient...
s (^), but later a variant similar to the tilde
Tilde
The tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....
(~) was also used.
The circumflex marked a syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
contracted
Crasis
Crasis is a type of contraction in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong — making one word out of two. Crasis occurs in Portuguese and Arabic as well as in Ancient Greek, where it was first described.-French:...
from two vowels: an acute-accented vowel and a non-accented vowel. Because all non-accented syllables were once marked with a grave accent, the contracted syllable was marked by the acute and grave combined. This combination became the circumflex.
| nóòs | contraction → |
nóùs = noûs (noũs) |
| νόὸς | νόὺς = νοῦς |
The term is also used to describe similar tonal accents that result from combining two vowels in related languages such as Sanskrit and Latin.
Since Modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
has a stress accent
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
instead of a pitch accent, the circumflex has been replaced with an acute accent
Acute accent
The acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
in the modern monotonic orthography.
Length
The circumflex accent marks a long vowelVowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
in the orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
or transliteration
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
of several languages.
- 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...
. In the transliteration of this language, the circumflex indicates a long vowel resulting from an alephAleph* Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...
contraction. - FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
. In some varieties, such as in Belgian FrenchBelgian FrenchBelgian French is the variety of French spoken mainly in the French Community of Belgium, alongside related minority regional languages such as Walloon, Picard, Champenois and Gaumais. The French spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi, which were formerly Belgian...
, vowels with a circumflex are long: fête ("party") is longer than faites. However it originated as a sign for an S in mediaeval manuscripts, and not as a length sign. - Standard FriulianFriulian languageFriulan , is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy. Friulan has around 800,000 speakers, the vast majority of whom also speak Italian...
. - JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
. In the Kunrei-shikiKunrei-shikiis a Japanese romanization system, i.e. a system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. It is abbreviated as Kunrei-shiki. Its name is rendered Kunreisiki using Kunrei-shiki itself....
system of Romanization, and sometimes the HepburnHepburn romanizationThe is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887. The system was originally proposed by the in 1885...
system, the circumflex is used as a replacement for the macronMacronA 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...
. - JèrriaisJèrriaisJèrriais is the form of the Norman language spoken in Jersey, in the Channel Islands, off the coast of France. It has been in decline over the past century as English has increasingly become the language of education, commerce and administration...
. - In Serbo-CroatianSerbo-CroatianSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
it can be used to distinguish homophones, and it's called the "genitive sign" or "length sign". Examples include sam (am) versus sâm (alone). For example, the phrase "I am alone" may be written Ja sam sâm to improve clarity. Another example: da (yes), dâ (gives). - 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,...
. According to Turkish Language AssociationTurkish Language AssociationThe Turkish Language Association is the official regulatory body of the Turkish language, founded on July 12, 1932 and headquartered in Ankara, Turkey...
orthography, düzeltme işareti ("correction mark") over a, i and u marks a long vowel to disambiguate similar words. For example, compare ama (but) and âmâ (blind), şura (that place, there) and şûra (council). - WelshWelsh languageWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
. The circumflex is known as hirnod ("long sign"), acen grom ("crooked accent") and also colloquially as to bach ("little roof"). It lengthens a vowel (a, e, i, o, u, w, y), and is used particularly to differentiate between homographsHomonymIn linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...
; e.g. tan and tân, ffon and ffôn, gem and gêm, cyn and cŷn, or gwn and gŵn. - In AdûnaicAdûnaicAdûnaic is a fictional language in the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien.One of the languages of Arda in Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, it was spoken by the Men of Númenor during the Second Age.-Fictional history:...
, the Black SpeechBlack SpeechThe Black Speech is a fictional language created by J. R. R. Tolkien.One of the languages of Arda in Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, it was spoken in the realm of Mordor...
, and KhuzdulKhuzdulKhuzdul is a constructed language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien. It is one of the many fictional language set in his Secondary world, often called Middle-earth...
, constructed languages of J. R. R. TolkienJ. R. R. TolkienJohn Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
, all long vowels are transcribed with the circumflex. In SindarinSindarinSindarin is a fictional language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used in his secondary world, often called Middle-earth.Sindarin is one of the many languages spoken by the immortal Elves, called the Eledhrim or Edhellim in Sindarin....
long vowels in monosyllabicSyllableA syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
words take the circumflex and long vowels in longer words take the acuteAcute accentThe acute accent is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.-Apex:An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.-Greek:...
.
Stress
The circumflex accent marks the stressed vowelStress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
of a word in some languages:
- PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
â, ê, and ô are stressed vowels. The circumflex further indicates their height (see below). - WelshWelsh languageWelsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
: the circumflex, due to its function as a disambiguating lengthening sign (see above), is used in polysyllabic words with word-final long vowels. The circumflex thus indicates the stressed syllable (which would normally be on the penultimate syllable), since in Welsh, non-stressed vowels may not normally be long. This happens notably where the singular ends in an a, to, e.g. singular camera, drama, opera, sinema → plural camerâu, dramâu, operâu, sinemâu; however, it also occurs in singular nominal forms, e.g. arwyddocâd; in verbal forms, e.g. deffrônt, cryffânt; etc.
Height
The circumflex is also used to indicate the relative height of some vowels:- In BretonBreton languageBreton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
, it is used on an e to show that the letter is pronounced open instead of closed. - PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
â /ɐ/, ê /e/, and ô /o/, are stressed high vowels, in opposition to á /a/, é /ɛ/, and ó /ɔ/ which are stressed low vowels. - VietnameseVietnamese 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...
â /ɐ/, ê /e/, and ô /o/ are higher vowels than a /ɑ/, e /ɛ/, and o /ɔ/. The circumflex can appear together with a tone mark on the same vowel, as in the word Việt Nam. Vowels with circumflex are considered separate letters from the base vowels.
Contraction
- In ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, î is occasionally used in the plural of nouns and adjectives ending with -io [jo] as a crasisCrasisCrasis is a type of contraction in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong — making one word out of two. Crasis occurs in Portuguese and Arabic as well as in Ancient Greek, where it was first described.-French:...
mark. Other possible spellings are -ii and obsolete -j or -ij. For example, the plural of vario [ˈvaːrjo] ("various") can be spelt vari, varî, varii; the pronunciation will usually stay [ˈvaːri] with only one [i]. The plural forms of principe /ˈprintʃipe/ ("prince") and of principio /prinˈtʃipjo/ ("principle" or "beginning") can be confusing. principi would be a correct writing of both, with the only difference of the stress being on the first or on the second syllable. In such cases, if the context does not allow disambiguation, it is advised to write the plural of principio as principî or as principii.
Deletion
- In FrenchFrench alphabetThe French alphabet is based on the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, uppercase and lowercase, with five diacritics and two orthographic ligatures.-Letter names:- Diacritics :...
, the circumflex generally marks the former presence of a consonant (usually s) that was deleted and is no longer pronounced. The English forms frequently retain the lost consonant.- ancêtre (ancestor)
- hôpital (hospital)
- hôtel (hostel)
- forêt (forest)
- rôtir (to roast)
- côte (coast)
- pâté (paste)
- août (August)
As ever, there are exceptions, such as
- depôt (Latin word depositum, meaning ‘deposit’, but now usually a bus/rail terminal or garage)
- Note that in current French, the English spellings, at least in terms of the syllable with the circumflex, could be pronounced the same as the French spellings, due to the transformative effect of s on the preceding vowel – for example forêt /fore/ 'forest', as per est /e/ (is, third person singular of être). Conversely, in the homographHomographA homograph is a word or a group of words that share the same written form but have different meanings. When spoken, the meanings may be distinguished by different pronunciations, in which case the words are also heteronyms. Words with the same writing and pronunciation A homograph (from the ,...
est /est/ 'east', the /s/ sound is pronounced.
- Some homophoneHomophoneA homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...
s (or near-homophones in some varieties of French) are distinguished by the circumflex, for instance cote ("level", "mark") and côte ("rib" or "coast"). The letter ê is normally pronounced openOpen-mid vowelAn open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel...
, like è. In the usual pronunciations of central and northern FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, ô is pronounced closeClose-mid vowelA close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel...
, like eau; in Southern France, no distinction is made between closeClose-mid vowelA close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel...
and openOpen-mid vowelAn open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel...
o. See also Use of the circumflex in FrenchUse of the circumflex in FrenchThe circumflex is one of the five diacritics used in the French language. It may be used atop the vowels a, e, i, o, and u.In French, the circumflex has three primary functions:...
.- English: In Britain, in the eighteenth century, before the cheap Penny PostPenny PostThe Penny Post is any one of several postal systems in which normal letters could be sent for one penny.-London Penny Post:In England, the Post Office had a monopoly on the collection and carriage of letters between post towns but there was no delivery system until the London Penny Post was...
and during the time paper was taxed, the combination ough was shortened to ô when the gh was not pronounced, in order to save room in letters: thô for though, thorô for thorough, and brôt for brought. - In NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, the circumflex generally marks the former presence of the letterLetterA letter is a written message from one party to another. The role of letters in communication has changed significantly since the nineteenth century...
ðÐA Latin capital letter D with a stroke through its vertical bar is the uppercase form of several different letters:*D with stroke , used in Vietnamese, some South Slavic , Moro and Sami languages...
in the spelling of the word – for example, fôr (foðr), vêr (veðr). The ð was replaced by an ordinary d before it disappeared (fodr, vedr).
- English: In Britain, in the eighteenth century, before the cheap Penny Post
Semivowel
- In Old Tupi, the circumflex changed a vowel into a semivowelSemivowelIn 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:...
: î was [j], û was [w], and ŷ was [ɰ].
Disambiguation
- In NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, it is used on ô and ê, almost exclusively in the words "fôr" (from Norse fóðr) and the related verb "fôre", meaning "lining" and "to line" (for clothes) or "animal food" and "to feed", to differentiate it from for (the preposition); lêr, meaning "leather" (Norse leðr) and "vêr" (Norse veðr), meaning "weather" or "ram". Both lêr and vêr occur only in the NynorskNynorskNynorsk or New Norwegian is one of two official written standards for the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. The standard language was created by Ivar Aasen during the mid-19th century, to provide a Norwegian alternative to the Danish language which was commonly written in Norway at the...
Norwegian; in BokmålBokmålBokmål is one of two official Norwegian written standard languages, the other being Nynorsk. Bokmål is used by 85–90% of the population in Norway, and is the standard most commonly taught to foreign students of the Norwegian language....
these words are spelled lær and vær.
Letter extension
- In BulgarianBulgarian languageBulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
, when transliterated into the Latin alphabet (in systems used prior to 1989), the sound represented in Bulgarian by â, although called a schwaSchwaIn 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...
(misleadingly suggesting an unstressed lax sound), is more accurately described as a mid back unrounded vowel /ɤ/. Unlike EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
or FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, but similar to 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...
and Afrikaans, it can be stressed. The Cyrillic letter 'ъ' (er goljam) sometimes is transliterated as 'â' or 'ŭ'; often it is just written as 'a' or 'u'. - In ChichewaChichewa languageChewa, also known as Nyanja, is a language of the Bantu language family. The gender prefix chi- is used for languages, so the language is also known as Chichewa and Chinyanja.-Distribution:...
, ŵ denotes the voiced bilabial fricativeVoiced bilabial fricative-See also:* List of phonetics topics...
/β/, hence the name of the country MalaŵiMalawiThe Republic of Malawi is a landlocked country in southeast Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the northwest, Tanzania to the northeast, and Mozambique on the east, south and west. The country is separated from Tanzania and Mozambique by Lake Malawi. Its size...
. - In EsperantoEsperantois 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 on ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ. Each indicates a different consonant from the unaccented form, and is considered a separate letter for purposes of collationCollationCollation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetization, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...
. See Esperanto orthographyEsperanto orthographyEsperanto is written in a Latin alphabet of twenty-eight letters, with upper and lower case. This is supplemented by punctuation marks and by various logograms, such as the numerals 0–9, currency signs such as $, and mathematical symbols....
. - In NsengaNsenga languageNsenga, also known as Senga, is a Bantu language of Zambia and Mozambique....
, ŵ denotes the labiodental approximantLabiodental approximantThe labiodental approximant is a type of consonantal sound, similar to an English double-u pronounced with the teeth and lips held in the position used to articulate the letter vee, used in some spoken languages...
/ʋ/. - In PinyinPinyinPinyin 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...
romanized Mandarin ChineseStandard MandarinStandard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
, ê is used to represent the sound /ɛ/ in isolation, which occurs sometimes as an exclamation. Also, ẑ, ĉ, and ŝ are, despite rarely, used to represent zh, ch, and sh, respectively. - 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...
, the circumflex is used on the vowels â and î to mark the vowel /ɨ/, similar to Russian yeryYeryYery or Yeru is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It represents the phoneme after non-palatalised consonants in the Belarusian and Russian alphabets...
. The names of these accented letters are â din a and î din i, respectively. Note: the letter â appears only in the middle of words; thus, its majuscule version appears only in all-capitals inscriptions. - In SlovakSlovak languageSlovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
, the circumflex (vokáň) turns the letter o into a diphthong ô /uo/.
Other regular uses
- In AfrikaansAfrikaansAfrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
, it simply marks a vowel with an irregular pronunciation that is typically stressed. Examples of circumflex use in Afrikaans are sê (to say), wêreld (world), môre (tomorrow) and brûe (bridges). - In 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,...
, the circumflex over a and u is used to indicate when a preceding consonant (k, g, l) is to be pronounced as a palatalPalatal consonantPalatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
plosive; [c], [ɟ] (kâğıt, gâvur, mahkûm, Gülgûn). The circumflex over i is used to indicate a nisba suffix (millî, dinî).
Exceptional use
- In EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
the circumflex, like other diacritics, is sometimes retained on loanwordLoanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s that used it in the original language; for example, rôle. - In FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, m with a circumflex is an informal abbreviation for même, "same," for example in taking notes. - In SwedishSwedish languageSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
when transcribing dialectal speech, the circumflex is often used to denote an a or o which is pronounced dialectally as if it has been written ä [æ] or ö [ø].
Mathematics
In mathematics, the circumflex is used to modify variable names; it is usually read "hat", e.g. î is "i hat". The Fourier transformFourier transform
In mathematics, Fourier analysis is a subject area which grew from the study of Fourier series. The subject began with the study of the way general functions may be represented by sums of simpler trigonometric functions...
of a function ƒ is often denoted by
.In the notation of sets, a hat above an element signifies that the element was removed from the set.
In vector notation, a hat above a letter indicates a unit vector (a dimensionless vector with a magnitude
Magnitude (mathematics)
The magnitude of an object in mathematics is its size: a property by which it can be compared as larger or smaller than other objects of the same kind; in technical terms, an ordering of the class of objects to which it belongs....
of 1). For instance, î stands for a unit vector in the direction of the x-axis.
In statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
, the hat is used to denote an estimator
Estimator
In statistics, an estimator is a rule for calculating an estimate of a given quantity based on observed data: thus the rule and its result are distinguished....
or an estimated value, as opposed to its theoretical counterpart. For example, in errors and residuals
Errors and residuals in statistics
In statistics and optimization, statistical errors and residuals are two closely related and easily confused measures of the deviation of a sample from its "theoretical value"...
, the hat in ε̂ indicates an observable estimate (the residuals) of an unobservable quantity called ε (the statistical errors). It is read x-hat or x-roof, where x represents the character under the hat.
See also
- CaretCaretCaret usually refers to the spacing symbol ^ in ASCII and other character sets. In Unicode, however, the corresponding character is , whereas the Unicode character named caret is actually a similar but lowered symbol: ....
- CaronCaronA 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...
- MacronMacronA 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...
- TildeTildeThe tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....
- Turned vTurned vTurned v is a letter of the Latin alphabet, based on a turned form of V.It is used in the orthography of Temne and some orthographies of Ibibio.The Unicode codepoint for lowercase is and for uppercase is ....
External links
- Diacritics Project – All you need to design a font with correct accents
- Keyboard Help – Learn how to create world language accent marks and other diacriticals on a computer