A caron (), háček or haček (, or ; plural ''háčeks'' or ''háčky'') also known as a hachek, wedge, check, kvačica, strešica, mäkčeň, varnelė, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, flying bird, inverted chevron, is a

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

mark (◌̌) commonly placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation. The symbol is common in the

Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages * Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originati ...

, Slavic, Finnic, Samic and

Berber Berber or Berbers may refer to: Ethnic group * Berbers, an ethnic group native to Northern Africa * Berber languages, a family of Afro-Asiatic languages Places * Berber, Sudan, a town on the Nile People with the surname * Ady Berber (1913–196 ...

languages. The use of the caron differs according to the orthographic rules of a language. In most Slavic and other European languages it indicates present or historical palatalization (e → ě; [] → []), iotation, or postalveolar consonant, postalveolar articulation (c → č; → ). In Salishan languages, it often represents a uvular consonant (x → x̌; [] → ). When placed over vowel symbols, the caron can indicate a contour tone, for instance the falling and then rising tone in the

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...

romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...

of Standard Chinese, Mandarin Chinese. It is also used to decorate symbols in mathematics, where it is often pronounced ("check"). The caron is shaped approximately like a small letter "v". For serif typefaces, the caron generally has one of two forms: either symmetrical, essentially identical to a rotated

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 ...

; or with the left stroke thicker than the right, like the usual serif form of the letter "v" (but without serifs). The latter form is often preferred by Czech designers for use in

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places *Czech, ...

, while for other uses the symmetrical form tends to predominate, as it does also among sans-serif fonts. The caron is not to be confused with the

breve A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in Slo ...

(◌̆), which has a curved bottom, while the caron is pointed (see illustration).

Names

Different disciplines generally refer to this diacritic mark by different names. Typography tends to use the term ''caron''. Linguistics more often uses ''haček'' (with no long mark), largely due to the influence of the

Prague School The Prague school or Prague linguistic circle is a language and literature society. It started in 1926 as a group of linguists, philologists and literary critics in Prague. Its proponents developed methods of structuralist literary analysis an ...

(particularly on Structuralist linguists who subsequently developed alphabets for previously unwritten languages of the Americas). Pullum's and Ladusaw's ''

Phonetic Symbol Guide The ''Phonetic Symbol Guide'' is a book by Geoffrey Pullum and William Ladusaw that explains the histories and uses of the symbols of various phonetic transcription conventions. It was published in 1986, with a second edition in 1996, by the Univ ...

'' (Chicago, 1996) uses the term ''wedge''. The term ''caron'' is used in the official names of

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

characters (e.g., "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z WITH CARON"). The

Unicode Consortium The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intenti ...

explicitly states that the reason for this is unknown, but its earliest known use was in the

United States Government Printing Office The United States Government Publishing Office (USGPO or GPO; formerly the United States Government Printing Office) is an agency of the legislative branch of the United States Federal government. The office produces and distributes information ...

Style Manual of 1967, and it was later used in character sets such as DIN 31624 (1979), ISO 5426 (1980), ISO/IEC 6937 (1983) and ISO/IEC 8859-2 (1985). Its actual origin remains obscure, but some have suggested that it may derive from a fusion of

caret Caret is the name used familiarly for the character , provided on most QWERTY keyboards by typing . The symbol has a variety of uses in programming and mathematics. The name "caret" arose from its visual similarity to the original proofreade ...

and macron. Though this may be

folk etymology Folk etymology (also known as popular etymology, analogical reformation, reanalysis, morphological reanalysis or etymological reinterpretation) is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more famili ...

, it is plausible, particularly in the absence of other suggestions. The ''

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...

'' gives 1953 as the earliest appearance in English for . In

, () means 'small

hook A hook is a tool consisting of a length of material, typically metal, that contains a portion that is curved or indented, such that it can be used to grab onto, connect, or otherwise attach itself onto another object. In a number of uses, one e ...

', the

diminutive A diminutive is a root word that has been modified to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment. A (abbreviated ) is a word-formati ...

form of (, 'hook')". The name appears in most English dictionaries, but they treat the long mark (

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...

) differently. British dictionaries, such as the ''

OED The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...

'', ''

ODE An ode (from grc, ᾠδή, ōdḗ) is a type of lyric poetry. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structured in three majo ...

'', '' CED'', write (with the mark) in the headwords, while American ones, such as the ''

Merriam-Webster Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States. In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as ...

'', '' NOAD'', '' AHD'', omit the acute and write , however, the ''NOAD'' gives as an alternative spelling. In Slovak it is called (, i.e., 'softener' or ' palatalization mark'), in

Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and ...

or ('angled hook' or 'small angled hook'), in

Slovenian Slovene or Slovenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Slovenia, a country in Central Europe * Slovene language, a South Slavic language mainly spoken in Slovenia * Slovenes The Slovenes, also known as Slovenians ( sl, Sloven ...

('little

roof A roof ( : roofs or rooves) is the top covering of a building, including all materials and constructions necessary to support it on the walls of the building or on uprights, providing protection against rain, snow, sunlight, extremes of temper ...

') or ('little hook'), in Lithuanian ('little bird') or ('little

jackdaw Jackdaws are two species of bird in the genus ''Coloeus'' closely related to, but generally smaller than, the crows and ravens (''Corvus''). ''Coloeus'' is sometimes treated as a subgenus of ''Corvus'', including by the IUCN.Madge & Burn (1994) ...

'), in

Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...

('roof'), in

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

('hat'), and in

Lakota Lakota may refer to: *Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language, the language of the Lakota peoples Place names In the United States: *Lakota, Iowa *Lakota, North Dakota, seat of Nelson County *Lakota ...

('wedge').

Origin

The caron evolved from the

dot above When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the ''interpunct'' ( · ), or to the glyphs "combining dot above" ( ◌̇ ) and "combining dot below" ( ◌̣ ) which may be combined with some letters of th ...

diacritic, which

Jan Hus Jan Hus (; ; 1370 – 6 July 1415), sometimes anglicized as John Hus or John Huss, and referred to in historical texts as ''Iohannes Hus'' or ''Johannes Huss'', was a Czech theologian and philosopher who became a Church reformer and the inspir ...

introduced into

Czech orthography Czech orthography is a system of rules for proper formal writing (orthography) in Czech. The earliest form of separate Latin script specifically designed to suit Czech was devised by Czech theologian and church reformist Jan Hus, the namesake of ...

(along with the

) in his '' De Orthographia Bohemica'' (1412). The original form still exists in

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

'' ż''. However, Hus's work was hardly known at that time, and ''háček'' became widespread only in the 16th century with the introduction of printing.

Usage

For the fricatives ''š'' , ''ž'' , and the affricate ''č'' only, the caron is used in most northwestern Uralic languages that use the Latin alphabet, such as Karelian, Veps,

Northern Sami Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ra ...

and

Inari Sami Inari may refer to: Shinto * Inari Ōkami, a Shinto spirit ** Mount Inari in Japan, site of Fushimi Inari-taisha, the main Shinto shrine to Inari ** Inari Shrine, shrines to the Shinto god Inari * Inari-zushi, a type of sushi Places * Inari, ...

(though not in

Southern Sami Southern may refer to: Businesses * China Southern Airlines, airline based in Guangzhou, China * Southern Airways, defunct US airline * Southern Air, air cargo transportation company based in Norwalk, Connecticut, US * Southern Airways Express, M ...

...

and

use ''š'' and ''ž'' (but not ''č''), but only for transcribing foreign names and loanwords (albeit common loanwords such as or 'check'); the sounds (and letters) are native and common in Karelian, Veps and Sami. In

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

, ''š'', ''ž'', and ''č'' are routinely used as in Slovenian to transcribe Slavic names in the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, ...

since in native Italian words, the sounds represented by these letters must be followed by a vowel, and Italian uses ''ch'' for , not . Other

Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...

, by contrast, tend to use their own orthographies, or in a few cases such as Spanish, borrow English ''sh'' or ''zh''. The caron is also used in the

Romany alphabet The Romani language has for most of its history been an entirely oral language, with no written form in common use. Although the first example of written Romani dates from 1542, it is not until the twentieth century that vernacular writing by native ...

. The Faggin-Nazzi writing system for Friulian makes use of the caron over the letters ''c'', ''g'', and ''s''. The caron is also often used as a diacritical mark on consonants for

of text from non-Latin writing systems, particularly in the

scientific transliteration Scientific transliteration, variously called ''academic'', ''linguistic'', ''international'', or ''scholarly transliteration'', is an international system for transliteration of text from the Cyrillic script to the Latin script (romanization). Thi ...

of Slavic languages. Philologists and the standard Finnish orthography often prefer using it to express sounds for which English require a digraph (''sh, ch'', and ''zh'') because most Slavic languages use only one character to spell the sounds (the key exceptions are Polish '' sz'' and '' cz''). Its use for that purpose can even be found in the United States because certain

atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic ...

es use it in romanization of foreign

place name Place may refer to: Geography * Place (United States Census Bureau), defined as any concentration of population ** Census-designated place, a populated area lacking its own municipal government * "Place", a type of street or road name ** Often ...

s. On the typographical side, Š/š and Ž/ž are likely the easiest among non-Western European diacritic characters to adopt for Westerners because the two are part of the

Windows-1252 Windows-1252 or CP-1252 ( code page 1252) is a single-byte character encoding of the Latin alphabet, used by default in the legacy components of Microsoft Windows for English and many European languages including Spanish, French, and German. It ...

character encoding.

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 ...

uses the

over ''c'', ''g'', ''j'' and ''s'' in similar ways; the circumflex was chosen because there was no caron on most Western European

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

s, but the circumflex existed on French ones. It is also used as an accent mark on vowels to indicate the tone of a syllable. The main example is in

for

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

in which it represents a falling-rising tone. It is used in transliterations of

Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...

to indicate a rising tone.

Phonetics

The caron represents a rising tone in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...

. It is used in the

Uralic Phonetic Alphabet The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nesto ...

for indicating postalveolar consonants and in

Americanist phonetic notation Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American an ...

to indicate various types of pronunciation. The caron below represents voicing.

Writing and printing carons

In printed Czech and Slovak text, the caron combined with certain letters (lower-case ť, ď, ľ, and upper-case Ľ) is reduced to a small stroke. That is optional in handwritten text. Latin fonts are typically set to display this way by default. Some fonts have an option to display a normal caron over these letters, but for those that don't, an option is to combine the letter and caron with the

combining grapheme joiner The combining grapheme joiner (CGJ), is a Unicode character that has no visible glyph and is "default ignorable" by applications. Its name is a misnomer and does not describe its function: the character does not join graphemes. Its purpose is to s ...

, U+034F, resulting in t͏̌, d͏̌, l͏̌. However, using CGJ in this way can result in the caron mark being misaligned with respect to its letter, as is true for the font Gentium Plus, for instance. In Lazuri orthography, the lower-case ''k'' with caron sometimes has its caron reduced to a stroke while the lower-case ''t'' with caron preserves its caron shape. Although the stroke looks similar to an

apostrophe The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes: * The marking of the omission of one o ...

, there is a significant difference in

kerning In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between Character (symbol), characters in a Typeface#Proportion, proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual le ...

. Using an apostrophe in place of a caron looks very unprofessional, but it can be found on goods produced in foreign countries and imported to Slovakia or the Czech Republic (compare t’ to ť, L’ahko to Ľahko). (Apostrophes appearing as palatalization marks in some

Finnic languages The Finnic (''Fennic'') or more precisely Balto-Finnic (Balto-Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Baltic Fennic) languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 mi ...

, such as

Võro Võro may refer to: * Võro people, an ethnic group of Estonia * Võro language Võro ( vro, võro kiilʼ, link=no , et, võru keel) is a language belonging to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. Traditionally, it has been con ...

and Karelian, are not forms of caron either.) Foreigners also sometimes mistake the caron for the

(compare Ĺ to Ľ, ĺ to ľ).

In Balto-Slavic languages

The following are the

and Slovak letters and digraphs with the caron (Czech: , Slovak: ): * Č/č (pronounced , similar to 'ch' in ''cheap'': , which means

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

) * Š/š (pronounced , similar to 'sh' in ''she'': in ) * Ž/ž (pronounced , similar to 's' in ''treasure'': 'sorrow') * Ř/ř (only in Czech: special fricative trill , transcribed as in pre-1989 IPA:

Antonín Dvořák Antonín Leopold Dvořák ( ; ; 8 September 1841 – 1 May 1904) was a Czechs, Czech composer. Dvořák frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravian traditional music, Moravia and his native Bohemia, following t ...

) * Ď/ď, Ť/ť, Ň/ň (palatals, pronounced , , , slightly different from palatalized consonants as found in Russian): , 'The Devil and a beheaded horse') * Ľ/ľ (only in Slovak, pronounced as palatal : , 'businessman') * DŽ/Dž/dž (considered a single letter in Slovak, Macedonian, and

, two letters in Czech, pronounced "jungle" - identical to the ''j'' sound in ''jungle'' and the ''g'' in ''genius'', found mostly in borrowings.) * Ě/ě (only in Czech) indicates mostly palatalization of preceding consonant: ** , , are , , ; ** but is or , and , , , are . * Furthermore, until the 19th century, Ǧ/ǧ was used to represent while G/g was used to represent . In

Lower Sorbian Lower may refer to: *Lower (surname) *Lower Township, New Jersey *Lower Receiver (firearms) *Lower Wick Lower Wick is a small hamlet located in the county of Gloucestershire, England. It is situated about five miles south west of Dursley, eight ...

and

Upper Sorbian Upper Sorbian (), occasionally referred to as "Wendish", is a minority language spoken by Sorbs in Germany in the historical province of Upper Lusatia, which is today part of Saxony. It is grouped in the West Slavic language branch, together ...

, the following letters and digraphs have the caron: * Č/č (pronounced like 'ch' in ''cheap'') * Š/š (pronounced like 'sh' in ''she'') * Ž/ž (pronounced like 's' in ''treasure'') * Ř/ř (only in Upper Sorbian: pronounced like 'sh' in ''she'') * Tř/tř (digraph, only in Upper Sorbian, soft (palatalized) sound) * Ě/ě (pronounced like 'e' in ''bed'') Balto-Slavic

, Latvian and Lithuanian use č, š and ž. The digraph dž is also used in these languages but is considered a separate letter only in Serbo-Croatian. The Belarusian

Lacinka alphabet The Belarusian Latin alphabet or Łacinka (from be, лацінка or łacinka, BGN/PCGN: ''Latsinka'', ) for the Latin script in general is the common name for writing Belarusian using Latin script. It is similar to the Sorbian alphabet an ...

also contains the digraph dž (as a separate letter), and Latin transcriptions of

Bulgarian Bulgarian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Bulgaria * Bulgarians, a South Slavic ethnic group * Bulgarian language, a Slavic language * Bulgarian alphabet * A citizen of Bulgaria, see Demographics of Bulgaria * Bul ...

and Macedonian may use them at times, for transcription of the letter-combination ДЖ (Bulgarian) and the letter Џ (Macedonian).

In Uralic languages

In the

...

(and transcriptions to

) use Š/š and Ž/ž, and Karelian use Č/č, Š/š and Ž/ž. Dž is not a separate letter. Č is present because it may be phonemically

geminate In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...

: in Karelian, the phoneme 'čč' is found, and is distinct from 'č', which is not the case in Finnish or Estonian, for which only one length is recognized for 'tš'. (Incidentally, in transcriptions, Finnish orthography has to employ complicated notations like or even the to express Karelian .) On some Finnish keyboards, it is possible to write those letters by typing ''s'' or ''z'' while holding right

Alt key The Alt key (pronounced or ) on a computer keyboard is used to change (alternate) the function of other pressed keys. Thus, the Alt key is a modifier key, used in a similar fashion to the Shift key. For example, simply pressing ''A'' will ty ...

AltGr key AltGr (also Alt Graph) is a modifier key found on many computer keyboards (rather than a second Alt key found on US keyboards). It is primarily used to type characters that are not widely used in the territory where sold, such as foreign cur ...

, though that is not supported by the Microsoft Windows keyboard device driver KBDFI.DLL for the Finnish language. In Estonian, Finnish and Karelian these are ''not'' palatalized but postalveolar consonants. For example, Estonian (palatalized) is distinct from (postalveolar). Palatalization is typically ignored in spelling, but some Karelian and Võro orthographies use an

(') or an acute accent (´). In Finnish and Estonian, ''š'' and ''ž'' (and in Estonian, very rarely ''č'') appear in loanwords and foreign

proper names A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', '' Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...

only and when not available, they can be substituted with 'h': 'sh' for 'š', in print. In the orthographies of the

Sami languages Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...

, the letters Č/č, Š/š and Ž/ž appear in

and Skolt Sami. Skolt Sami also uses three other consonants with the caron: Ǯ/ǯ (

ezh Ezh (Ʒ ʒ) , also called the "tailed z", is a letter whose lower case form is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), representing the voiced postalveolar fricative consonant. For example, the pronunciation of "si" in ''vi ...

-caron) to mark the voiced postalveolar affricate (plain Ʒ/ʒ marks the alveolar affricate ), Ǧ/ǧ to mark the voiced palatal affricate and Ǩ/ǩ the corresponding voiceless palatal affricate . More often than not, they are geminated: ''vuäǯǯad'' "to get". The orthographies of the more southern Sami languages of Sweden and Norway such as

Lule Sami Lule may refer to: * Lule people, an indigenous people of northern Argentina * Lule language, a possibly extinct language of Argentina * Lule Sami language, a language spoken in Sweden and Norway * Luleå, also known as Lule, a town in Sweden * Lul ...

do not use caron, and prefer instead the digraphs ''tj'' and ''sj''.

Finno-Ugric transcription

Most other Uralic languages (including

Kildin Sami Kildin may refer to: * Kildin Island * Kildin class destroyer * Kildin Sami * Ostrov (air base) Ostrov (Russian: ''Веретье'' ("Veret"); also Ostrov-5, Gorokhovka) is a Russian Air Force air base

) are normally written with

Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...

instead of the Latin script. In their scientific

transcription Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including: Genetics * Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...

, the

Finno-Ugric Transcription The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nest ...

however employs the letters ''š'', ''ž'' and occasionally ''č'', ''ǯ'' (alternately ''tš'', ''dž'') for the postalveolar consonants. These serve as basic letters, and with further diacritics are used to transcribe also other fricative and affricate sounds.

Retroflex consonant A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the har ...

s are marked by a caron and an

underdot When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the ''interpunct'' ( · ), or to the glyphs "combining dot above" ( ◌̇ ) and "combining dot below" ( ◌̣ ) which may be combined with some letters of th ...

(''ṣ̌'', ''ẓ̌'' = IPA , ),

alveolo-palatal In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simultaneous alveolar and palatal articul ...

(palatalized postalveolar) consonants by a caron and an

acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse eff ...

(''š́'', ''ž́'' = IPA , ). Thus, for example, the postalveolar consonants of the Udmurt language, normally written as Ж/ж, Ӝ/ӝ, Ӵ/ӵ, Ш/ш are in Uralic studies normally transcribed as ''ž'', ''ǯ'', ''č'', ''š'' respectively, and the alveolo-palatal consonants normally written as Зь/зь, Ӟ/ӟ, Сь/сь, Ч/ч are normally transcribed as ''ž́'', ''ǯ́'', ''š́'', ''č́'' respectively.

In other languages

In the Berber Latin alphabet of the

Berber language The Berber languages, also known as the Amazigh languages or Tamazight,, ber, label=Tuareg Tifinagh, ⵜⵎⵣⵗⵜ, ) are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They comprise a group of closely related languages spoken by Berber commun ...

(North Africa) the following letters and digraphs are used with the caron: * Č/č (pronounced like the English "ch" in China) * Ǧ/ǧ (pronounced like the English "j" in the words "joke" and "James") * Ř/ř (only in Northern Berber languages: pronounced like in Czech) (no English equivalent).

Finnish Kalo Finnish Kalo () is a language of the Romani language family (a subgroup of Indo-European) spoken by Finnish Kale. The language is related to but not mutually intelligible with Scandoromani or Angloromani. Finnish Kalo has 6,000–10,000 speake ...

uses Ȟ/ȟ.

uses Č/č, Š/š, Ž/ž, Ǧ/ǧ (voiced post-velar fricative) and Ȟ/ȟ (plain post-velar fricative).

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesian ...

uses ě (e with caron) informally to mark the

schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...

( id, pepet). Many alphabets of African languages use the caron to mark the rising tone, as in the

African reference alphabet An African reference alphabet was first proposed in 1978 by a UNESCO-organized conference held in Niamey, Niger, and the proposed alphabet was revised in 1982. The conference recommended the use of single letters for a sound (that is, a phoneme) ...

. Outside of the Latin alphabet, the caron is also used for

Cypriot Greek Cypriot Greek ( el, κυπριακή ελληνική or ) is the Varieties of Modern Greek, variety of Modern Greek that is spoken by the majority of the Cyprus, Cypriot populace and Greek Cypriot diaspora. It is considered a divergent dialect ...

letters that have a different sound from

Standard Modern Greek The linguistic varieties of Modern Greek can be classified along two principal dimensions. First, there is a long tradition of sociolectal variation between the natural, popular spoken language on the one hand and archaizing, learned written form ...

: σ̌ κ̌ π̌ τ̌ ζ̌ in words like ('and'), ('cat').

Other transcription and transliteration systems

The

DIN 31635 DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG) as modified by the International Orientalist ...

standard for transliteration of Arabic uses Ǧ/ǧ to represent the letter . '' '', on account of the inconsistent pronunciation of J in European languages, the variable pronunciation of the letter in educated Arabic , and the desire of the DIN committee to have a one-to-one correspondence of Arabic to Latin letters in its system. Romanization of

Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages ...

uses Č/č, Š/š, Ž/ž, X̌/x̌, to represent the letters ‎چ‎, ‎ش‎, ‎ژ‎, ‎ښ‎, respectively. Additionally, Ṣ̌/ṣ̌ and Ẓ̌/ẓ̌ are used by the southern Pashto dialect only (replaced by X̌/x̌ and Ǵ/ǵ in the north). The latter Š/š is also used to transcribe the phoneme in Sumerian and

Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...

cuneiform, and the phoneme in

Semitic languages The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...

represented by the letter

shin Shin may refer to: Biology * The front part of the human leg below the knee * Shinbone, the tibia, the larger of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates Names * Shin (given name) (Katakana: シン, Hiragana: しん), a Japanese ...

(Phoenician Phoenician sin

and its descendants). The caron is also used in

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin (; ) is a group of Chinese (Sinitic) dialects that are natively spoken across most of northern and southwestern China. The group includes the Beijing dialect, the basis of the phonology of Standard Chinese, the official language of ...

pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese for ...

romanization and orthographies of several other

tonal language Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey empha ...

s to indicate the "falling-rising" tone (similar to the pitch made when asking "Huh?"). The caron can be placed over the vowels: ǎ, ě, ǐ, ǒ, ǔ, ǚ. The alternative to a caron is a number 3 after the syllable: = , as the "falling-rising" tone is the third tone in

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

. The caron is used in the New Transliteration System of

D'ni ''Myst'' is a franchise centered on a series of adventure video games. The first game in the series, ''Myst'', was released in 1993 by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller and their video game company Cyan, Inc. The first sequel to ''Myst'', ''Riven' ...

in the symbol š to represent the sound (English "sh"). A-caron (ǎ) is also used to transliterate the

letter Ъ () in

—it represents the

mid back unrounded vowel The mid back unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. Although there is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the exact mid back unrounded vowel between close-mid and open-mid ...

. Caron marks a falling and rising tone (bǔ, bǐ) in Fon languages.

Letters with caron

Software

Unicode

For legacy reasons, most letters that carry carons are

precomposed character A precomposed character (alternatively composite character or decomposable character) is a Unicode entity that can also be defined as a sequence of one or more other characters. A precomposed character may typically represent a letter with a diacri ...

s in

, but a caron can also be added to any letter by using the

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 (including combining accents). Unicode also ...

, for example: b̌ q̌ J̌. The characters Č, č, Ě, ě, Š, š, Ž, ž are a part of the

Latin Extended-A Latin Extended-A is a Unicode block and is the third block of the Unicode standard. It encodes Latin letters from the Latin ISO character sets other than Latin-1 (which is already encoded in the Latin-1 Supplement block) and also legacy character ...

set because they occur in Czech and other official languages in Europe, while the rest are in

Latin Extended-B Latin Extended-B is the fourth block (0180-024F) of the Unicode Standard. It has been included since version 1.0, where it was only allocated to the code points 0180-01FF and contained 113 characters. During unification with ISO 10646 for version ...

, which often causes an inconsistent appearance. Unicode also encodes , for example: p̬.

References

External links

* * {{Latin script, , caron Greek-script diacritics Latin-script diacritics