Ê, ê ( e-

circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...

) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, found in Afrikaans, French, Friulian, Kurdish, Norwegian (Nynorsk), Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Welsh. It is used to transliterate Chinese, Persian, and Ukrainian.

Usage in various languages

Afrikaans

Ê is not considered a separate letter in Afrikaans but a variation of "E". The circumflex changes the pronunciation of "e" to be (or if the succeeding consonant is either a dorsal or a liquid)

Chinese

In the Pinyin romanization of

Standard Mandarin Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standar ...

Chinese, ''ê'' represents . It corresponds to Zhuyin ㄝ. The circumflex occurs only if ''ê'' is the only letter in the syllable: ''ề'' (; "eh!"). Without the circumflex, ''e'' as, the only letter in the syllable, represents : ''è'' (; "hungry"). Elsewhere, is written as ''a'' (before ''n'') or ''e'' (at the end of a syllable), with the appropriate tone mark,: ''xiān'' (; "first"), ''xuǎn'' (; "to choose"), ''xué'' (; "to learn"), ''xièxie'' (; "thanks"). In Pe̍h-ōe-jī, ''ê'' is the fifth tone of ''e'': ''ê'' (; possessive, adjectival suffix).

French

Diacritics are not considered to be distinct letters of the French alphabet. In French, ê changes the pronunciation of ''e'' from /ə/ to /ɛ/. It is used instead of "è" for words that used to be written "es".

Friulian

Ê represents and .

Italian

Ê occasionally used to represent or in words like ''fêro'' (they did).

Khmer

Ê is used in UNGEGN romanization system for Khmer to represent and , for example ''Khmêr'' ( ) and

Dângrêk Mountains The Dângrêk Mountains (; km, ជួរភ្នំដងរែក, ; th, ทิวเขาพนมดงรัก, ), also the Dângrêk Range, is a mountain range forming a natural border between Cambodia and Thailand. Geography Despi ...

( ).

Kurdish

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

Persian

Ê is used in the Persian Latin (Rumi) alphabet, equivalent to ع.

Portuguese

In Portuguese, ê marks a stressed only in words whose stressed syllable is in an otherwise unpredictable location in the word: "pêssego" (peach). The letter, pronounced , can also contrast with é, pronounced , as in ''pé'' (foot).

Tibetan

Ê is used in Tibetan pinyin to represent , for example

Gêrzê County Gertse County (), Gêrzê County or Gaize County () is a county located in Ngari Prefecture in the northwest of the Tibet Autonomous Region, bordering Xinjiang to the north. Name Gêrzê is the Tibetan word for a special type of local-style dwe ...

Ukrainian

Ê is used in the ISO 9:1995 system of

Ukrainian transliteration The romanization of Ukrainian, or Latinization of Ukrainian, is the representation of the Ukrainian language in Latin letters. Ukrainian is natively written in its own Ukrainian alphabet, which is based on the Cyrillic script. Romanization may be ...

as the letter Є.

Vietnamese

Ê is the 9th letter of the Vietnamese alphabet and represents . In Vietnamese phonology, diacritics can be added to form five forms to represent five tones of ê: * Ề ề * Ể ể * Ễ ễ * Ế ế * Ệ ệ

Welsh

In Welsh, ''ê'' represents long stressed ''e'' if the vowel would otherwise be pronounced as short : ''llên'' "literature", as opposed to ''llen'' "curtain", or ''gêm'' "game", as opposed to ''gem'' "gem, jewel". That is useful for borrowed words with a final stress like ''apêl'' "appeal".

Other

Popido An Esperantido (plural Esperantidoj) is a constructed language derived from Esperanto. ''Esperantido'' originally referred to the language which is now known as Ido. The word ''Esperantido'' contains the affix (''-ido''), which means a "child (' ...

, a fictitious dialect of

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

made by Manuel Halvelik for use in literature, ''ê'' represents . It is only used epenthetically to break consonant clusters, especially before grammatical suffixes.

Usage

In seismology

* The letter ''ê'' is sometimes used to denote a seismic magnitude scales in seismology for representing energy magnitude scales (M_ê).

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 Combining Diacritical Marks is a Unicode block containing the most common combining characters. It also contains the character "Combining Grapheme Joiner", which prevents canonical reordering of combining characters, and despite the name, actual ...

, like ê̄ (ê̄) and ê̌ (ê̌).