A macron ( ) is a
diacritical mark
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 ''diacrit ...
: it is a straight bar placed above a letter, usually a
vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
. Its name derives from
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
(''makrón'') 'long' because it was originally used to mark
long or heavy syllable
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
s in
Greco-Roman metrics. It now more often marks a
long
Long may refer to:
Measurement
* Long, characteristic of something of great duration
* Long, characteristic of something of great length
* Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate
* Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...
vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
. In the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
, the macron is used to indicate a
mid-tone; the sign for a long vowel is instead a modified triangular
colon .
The opposite is the
breve
A breve ( , less often , grammatical gender, 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 ...
, which marks a short or light syllable or a short vowel.
Uses
Syllable weight
In
Greco-Roman metrics and in the description of the metrics of other literatures, the macron was introduced and is still widely used in dictionaries and educational materials to mark a
long (heavy) syllable. Even relatively recent classical Greek and Latin dictionaries are still concerned with indicating only the length (weight) of syllables; that is why most still do not indicate the length of vowels in syllables that are otherwise metrically determined. Many textbooks about Ancient Rome and Greece use the macron, even if it was not actually used at that time (an
apex
The apex is the highest point of something. The word may also refer to:
Arts and media Fictional entities
* Apex (comics)
A-Bomb
Abomination
Absorbing Man
Abraxas
Abyss
Abyss is the name of two characters appearing in Ameri ...
was used if vowel length was marked in Latin).
Vowel length
The following languages or transliteration systems use the macron to mark
long vowels
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels.
On one hand, many languages do not d ...
:
*
Slavicist
Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics, is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic peoples, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was ...
s use the macron to indicate a non-tonic long vowel, or a non-tonic syllabic liquid, such as on ''a'', ''e'', ''r'', or ''u''. Languages with this feature include standard and dialect varieties of
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...
,
Slovene, and
Bulgarian.
* Transcriptions of
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
typically use macrons to indicate long vowels – (
alif
Alif may refer to:
Languages
* Alif (ا) in the Arabic alphabet#Alif, Arabic alphabet, equivalent to aleph, the first letter of many Semitic alphabets
** Dagger alif, superscript alif in Arabic alphabet
* Alif, the first letter of the Urdu alpha ...
when pronounced ), (
waw, when pronounced or ), and (
ya', when pronounced or ). Thus the Arabic word (three) is transliterated ''thalāthah''.
*Transcriptions of
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
typically use a macron over ā, ī, ū, ṝ, and ḹ in order to mark a long vowel (e and o are always long and consequently do not need any macron).
* In
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, many of the more recent dictionaries and learning materials use the macron as the modern equivalent of the ancient Roman
apex
The apex is the highest point of something. The word may also refer to:
Arts and media Fictional entities
* Apex (comics)
A-Bomb
Abomination
Absorbing Man
Abraxas
Abyss
Abyss is the name of two characters appearing in Ameri ...
to mark long vowels. Any of the six vowel letters ''(ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, ȳ)'' can bear it. It is sometimes used in conjunction with the
breve
A breve ( , less often , grammatical gender, 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 ...
, especially to distinguish the short vowels and from their semi-vowel counterparts and , originally, and often to this day, spelt with the same letters. However, the older of these editions are not always explicit on whether they mark long vowels or heavy syllables – a confusion that is even found in some modern learning materials. In addition, most of the newest academic publications use both the macron and the breve sparingly, mainly when vowel length is relevant to the discussion.
*In
romanization
In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...
of
classical Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archa ...
, the letters
η (''eta'') and
ω (''omega'') are transliterated, respectively, as ''ē'' and ''ō'', representing the long vowels of classical Greek, whereas the short vowels
ε (''epsilon'') and
ο (''omicron'') are always transliterated as plain ''e'' and ''o.'' The other long vowel phonemes do not have dedicated letters in the
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...
, being indicated by digraphs (transliterated likewise as digraphs) or by the letters
α,
ι,
υ – represented as ''ā, ī, ū''. The same three letters are transliterated as plain ''a, i, u'' when representing short vowels.
* The
Hepburn romanization
is the main system of Romanization of Japanese, romanization for the Japanese language. The system was originally published in 1867 by American Christian missionary and physician James Curtis Hepburn as the standard in the first edition of h ...
system of
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
, for example, ''tā'' () as opposed to ''ta'' ().
* The
Syriac language
The Syriac language ( ; ), also known natively in its spoken form in early Syriac literature as Edessan (), the Mesopotamian language () and Aramaic (), is an Aramaic#Eastern Middle Aramaic, Eastern Middle Aramaic dialect. Classical Syriac is ...
uses macrons to indicate long vowels in its romanized transliteration: ''ā'' for , ''ē'' for , ''ū'' for and ''ō'' for .
*
Baltic languages
The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively or as a second language by a population of about 6.5–7.0 million people and
Baltic-Finnic languages
The Finnic or Baltic Finnic languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 million speakers, who live mainly in Finland and Estonia.
Traditionally, ...
:
**
Latvian. ''ā'', ''ē'', ''ī'', ''ū'' are separate letters but are given the same position in
collation
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fi ...
as ''a'', ''e'', ''i'', ''u'' respectively. ''Ō'' was also used in Latvian, but it was discarded as of 1946. Some usage remains in
Latgalian.
**
Lithuanian. ''ū'' is a separate letter but is given the same position in
collation
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fi ...
as the unaccented ''u''. It marks a long vowel; other long vowels are indicated with an
ogonek
The tail or ( ; Polish: , "little tail", diminutive of ) is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European languages, and directly under a vowel in several Native American langu ...
(which used to indicate nasalization, but it no longer does): ''ą'', ''ę'', ''į'', ''ų'' and ''o'' being always long in Lithuanian except for some recent loanwords. For the long counterpart of ''i'', ''y'' is used.
**
Livonian. ''ā'', ''ǟ'', ''ē'', ''ī'', ''ō'', ''ȱ'', ''ȭ'' and ''ū'' are separate letters that sort in alphabetical order immediately after ''a'', ''ä'', ''e'', ''i'', ''o'', ''ȯ'', ''õ'', and ''u'', respectively.
**
Samogitian. ''ā'', ''ē'', ''ė̄'', ''ī'', ''ū'' and ''ō'' are separate letters that sort in alphabetical order immediately after ''a'', ''e'', ''ė'', ''i'', ''u'' and ''o'' respectively.
* Transcriptions of
Nahuatl
Nahuatl ( ; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahuas, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller popul ...
, the
Aztecs
The Aztecs ( ) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the ...
' language, spoken in
Mexico
Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived, they wrote the language in their own alphabet without distinguishing long vowels. Over a century later, in 1645,
Horacio Carochi
Horacio Carochi (1586–1666) was a Jesuit priest and grammarian who was born in Florence and died in New Spain. He is known for his grammar of the Classical Nahuatl language.
Life
Carochi was born in Florence as Horazio Carocci. He went to Ro ...
defined macrons to mark long vowels ''ā'', ''ē'', ''ī'' and ''ō'', and short vowels with grave (`) accents. This is rare nowadays since many people write Nahuatl without any orthographic sign and with the letters ''k'', ''s'' and ''w'', not present in the original alphabet.
* Modern transcriptions of
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
, for long vowels.
* Latin transliteration of
Pali
Pāli (, IAST: pāl̤i) is a Classical languages of India, classical Middle Indo-Aryan languages, Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pali Canon, Pāli Can ...
and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
, and in the
IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Brahmic family, Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that ...
and
ISO 15919
ISO 15919 is an international standard for the romanization of Indic scripts. Published in 2001, it is part of a series of romanization standards by the International Organization for Standardization.
Overview
Relation to other systems
...
transcriptions of
Indo-Aryan and
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian languages are a language family, family of languages spoken by 250 million people, primarily in South India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan, with pockets elsewhere in South Asia.
The most commonly spoken Dravidian l ...
.
*
Polynesian languages
The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family.
There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austr ...
:
**
Cook Islands Māori
Cook Islands Māori is an Eastern Polynesian language that is the official language of the Cook Islands. Cook Islands Māori is closely related to, but distinct from, New Zealand Māori. Cook Islands Māori is called just Māori when there i ...
. In Cook Islands Māori, the macron or ''mākarōna'' is not commonly used in writing, but is used in references and teaching materials for those learning the language.
**
Hawaiian. The macron is called ''kahakō'', and it indicates vowel length, which changes meaning and the placement of
stress.
**
Māori
Māori or Maori can refer to:
Relating to the Māori people
* Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group
* Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand
* Māori culture
* Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...
. In modern written Māori, the macron is used to designate long vowels, with the
trema
Trema may refer to:
* a Greek and Latin root meaning ''hole''
* Trema, a term for the two dots (diacritic)
** Tréma, (French), a diaeresis
* ''Trema'' (plant), a genus of about 15 species of small evergreen trees
* Tréma (record label), a Fr ...
mark sometimes used if the macron is unavailable (e.g. "wähine"). The Māori word for macron is ''tohutō.'' The term ''pōtae'' ("hat") is also used. In the past, writing in Māori either did not distinguish vowel length, or doubled long vowels (e.g. "waahine"), as some
iwi
Iwi () are the largest social units in New Zealand Māori society. In Māori, roughly means or , and is often translated as "tribe". The word is both singular and plural in the Māori language, and is typically pluralised as such in English.
...
dialects still do.
**
Niuean. In Niuean, "popular spelling" does not worry too much about vowel quantity (length), so the macron is primarily used in scholarly study of the language.
**
Tahitian. The use of the macron is comparatively recent in Tahitian. The ''Fare Vānaa'' or ''Académie Tahitienne'' (Tahitian Academy) recommends using the macron, called the ''tārava,'' to represent long vowels in written text, especially for scientific or teaching texts and it has widespread acceptance. (In the past, written Tahitian either did not distinguish vowel length, or used multiple other ways).
**
Tongan and
Samoan. The macron is called the ''toloi/fakamamafa'' or ''fa'amamafa'', respectively. Its usage is similar to that in Māori, including its substitution by a trema. Its usage is not universal in Samoan, but recent academic publications and advanced study textbooks promote its use.
* The macron is used in
Fijian language
Fijian (') or iTaukei is an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language of the Malayo-Polynesian languages, Malayo-Polynesian family spoken by some 350,000–450,000 ethnic Fijians as a native language. The 1997 Constitution of Fiji#New Consti ...
dictionaries, in instructional materials for non-Fijian speakers, and in books and papers on Fijian linguistics. It is not typically used in Fijian publications intended for fluent speakers, where context is usually sufficient for a reader to distinguish between
heteronyms.
* Both
Cyrillic
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...
and Latin transcriptions of
Udege.
* The Latin and Cyrillic alphabet transcriptions of the Tsebari dialect of
Tsez.
* In western
Cree
The Cree, or nehinaw (, ), are a Indigenous peoples of the Americas, North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations in Canada, First Nations. They live prim ...
,
Sauk, and
Saulteaux
The Saulteaux (pronounced , or in imitation of the French pronunciation , also written Salteaux, Saulteau and Ojibwa ethnonyms, other variants), otherwise known as the Plains Ojibwe, are a First Nations in Canada, First Nations band governm ...
, the Algonquianist Standard Roman Orthography (SRO) indicates long vowels either with a
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 "bent around"a translation of ...
⟨''â ê î ô''⟩ or with a macron ⟨''ā ē ī ō''⟩.
Tone
The following languages or alphabets use the macron to mark
tones:
* In the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
, a macron over a vowel indicates a mid-level tone.
* In
Yoruba an optional macron can be used to indicate mid-level tone if it would otherwise be ambiguous.
* In
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
, the official
Romanization of Mandarin Chinese
Romanization of Chinese is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Varieties of Chinese, Chinese. Chinese uses a logographic script and its Chinese characters, characters do not represent phonemes directly. There have been many systems us ...
, macrons over a, e, i, o, u, ü (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, ǖ) indicate the high level
tone
Tone may refer to:
Visual arts and color-related
* Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory
* Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color
* Toning (coin), color change in coins
* ...
of
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...
. The alternative to the macron is the number 1 after the syllable (for example, tā = ta1).
* Similarly in the
Yale romanization of Cantonese
The Yale romanization of Cantonese was developed by Yale scholar Gerard P. Kok for his and Parker Po-fei Huang's textbook ''Speak Cantonese'' initially circulated in looseleaf form in 1952 but later published in 1958. Unlike the Yale romaniz ...
, macrons over a, e, i, o, u, m, n (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, m̄, n̄) indicate the high level
tone
Tone may refer to:
Visual arts and color-related
* Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory
* Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color
* Toning (coin), color change in coins
* ...
of
Cantonese
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...
. Like Mandarin, the alternative to the macron is the number 1 after the syllable (for example, tā = ta1).
* In
Pe̍h-ōe-jī
( ; , , ; POJ), also known as Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Hokkien Southern Min, particularly Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese and Amoy dialect, Amoy Hokkien, and it is widely employed as one of the writing syst ...
romanization of
Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
, macrons over a, e, i, m, n, o, o͘, u, (ā, ē, ī, m̄, n̄, ō, ō͘, ū) indicate the mid level
tone
Tone may refer to:
Visual arts and color-related
* Tone (color theory), a mix of tint and shade, in painting and color theory
* Tone (color), the lightness or brightness (as well as darkness) of a color
* Toning (coin), color change in coins
* ...
("light departing" or 7th tone) of Hokkien.
Omission
Sometimes the macron marks an omitted ''n'' or ''m'', like the
tilde
The tilde (, also ) is a grapheme or with a number of uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish , which in turn came from the Latin , meaning 'title' or 'superscription'. Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
, in which context it is referred to as a "":
* In Old English texts a macron above a letter indicates the omission of an ''m'' or ''n'' that would normally follow that letter.
* In older handwriting such as the German
Kurrent
() is an old form of German-language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as ("cursive script"), ("German script"), and ''German cursive''. Over the history of its use into the first part of the 20th century, many ...
schrift, the macron over an a-e-i-o-u or ä-ö-ü stood for an ''n'', or over an ''m'' or an ''n'' meant that the letter was doubled. This continued into print in English in the sixteenth century, and to some extent in German. Over a ''u'' at the end of a word, the macron indicated ''um'' as a form of
scribal abbreviation
Scribal abbreviations, or sigla (grammatical number, singular: siglum), are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek language, Greek, Old English and Old Norse.
In modern Textua ...
.
Letter extension
In
romanizations of Hebrew, the
macron below
Macron below is a combining diacritical mark that is used in various orthographies.
A non-combining form is . It is not to be confused with , and . The difference between "macron below" and "low line" is that the latter results in an unbroken ...
is typically used to mark the
begadkefat
Begadkefat (also begedkefet) is the phenomenon of lenition affecting the non-emphatic consonant, emphatic stop consonants of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic when they are preceded by a vowel and not gemination, geminated. The name is also given to si ...
consonant
lenition
In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language ...
. However, for typographical reasons a regular macron is used on ''p'' and ''g'' instead: ''p̄, ḡ''.
The macron is used in the orthography of a number of vernacular languages of the
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands, also known simply as the Solomons,John Prados, ''Islands of Destiny'', Dutton Caliber, 2012, p,20 and passim is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 1000 smaller islands in Melanesia, part of Oceania, t ...
and
Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...
, particularly those first transcribed by
Anglican missionaries. The macron has no unique value, and is simply used to distinguish between two different phonemes.
Thus, in several languages of the
Banks Islands
The Banks Islands (in Bislama ''Bankis'') are a group of islands in northern Vanuatu. Together with the Torres Islands to their northwest, they make up the northernmost province of Torba Province, Torba. The island group lies about north of Maew ...
, including
Mwotlap
Mwotlap (pronounced ; formerly known as ''Motlav'') is an Oceanic language spoken by about 2,100 people in Vanuatu. The majority of speakers are found on the island of Motalava in the Banks Islands, with smaller communities in the islands of ...
, the simple ''m'' stands for , but an ''m'' with a macron (m̄) is a
rounded labial-velar nasal ; while the simple ''n'' stands for the common
alveolar nasal
The voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol i ...
, an ''n'' with macron (n̄) represents the
velar nasal
The voiced velar nasal, also known as eng, engma, or agma (from Greek 'fragment'), is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''E ...
; the vowel ē stands for a (short) higher by contrast with plain ''e'' ; likewise ō contrasts with plain ''o'' .
In
Hiw orthography, the consonant ''r̄'' stands for the prestopped
velar lateral approximant
The voiced velar lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used as a distinct consonant in a very small number of spoken languages in the world. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a small ...
.
In
Araki
Araki may refer to:
People
* Araki (surname) (荒木)
* Hirohiko Araki (荒木 飛呂彦), a Japanese manga artist, fashion designer and illustrator
* Nobuyoshi Araki (荒木 経惟), a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist also known by t ...
, the same symbol ''r̄'' encodes the
alveolar trill
The voiced alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental consonant, dental, alveolar consonant, alveolar, and postalveolar consonant, postalve ...
– by contrast with ''r'', which encodes the
alveolar flap
The voiced alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based pri ...
.
In
Bislama
Bislama ( ; ; also known by its earlier French name, ) is an English-based creole language. It is the national language of Vanuatu, and one of the three official languages of the country, the other ones being English and French. Bislama is the ...
(orthography before 1995),
Lamenu and
Lewo, a macron is used on two letters '. ''m̄'' represents , and ''p̄'' represents . The orthography after 1995 (which has no diacritics) has these written as ''mw'' and ''pw''.
In
Kokota, ''ḡ'' is used for the
velar stop
In phonetics and phonology, a velar stop is a type of consonantal sound, made with the back of the tongue in contact with the soft palate (also known as the velum, hence velar), held tightly enough to block the passage of air (hence a stop consona ...
, but ''g'' without macron is the
voiced velar fricative
The voiced velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound that is used in various spoken languages. It is not found in most varieties of Modern English but existed in Old English. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents ...
.
In
Marshallese, a macron is used on four letters – ' – whose pronunciations differ from the unmarked '. Marshallese uses a
vertical vowel system
A vertical vowel system is the system of vowels in a language that requires only vowel height to phonemically distinguish vowels. Theoretically, rounding, frontness and backness could also be used in one-dimensional vowel systems; however, ''v ...
with three to four vowel phonemes, but traditionally their allophones have been written out, so vowel letters with macron are used for some of these allophones. Though the standard diacritic involved is a macron, there are no other diacritics used ''above'' letters, so in practice other diacritics can and have been used in less polished writing or print, yielding nonstandard letters like ', depending on displayability of letters in
computer font
A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for printi ...
s.
* The letter ' is pronounced , the
palatalized allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...
of the phoneme .
* The letter ' represents the
velar nasal
The voiced velar nasal, also known as eng, engma, or agma (from Greek 'fragment'), is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''E ...
phoneme and the
labialized velar nasal phoneme , depending on context. The standard letter does not exist as a
precombined glyph in
Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
, so the nonstandard variant ' is often used in its place.
* The letter ' is pronounced or , which are the
unrounded
In phonetics, vowel roundedness is the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. It is labialization of a vowel. When a ''rounded'' vowel is pronounced, the lips form a circular opening, and ''unrounded'' vowels are pron ...
velarized allophones of the phonemes and respectively.
* The letter ' is pronounced , the unrounded velarized allophone of the phoneme .
In
Obolo, the simple n stands for the common
alveolar nasal
The voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol i ...
, while an ''n'' with macron (n̄) represents the
velar nasal
The voiced velar nasal, also known as eng, engma, or agma (from Greek 'fragment'), is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''E ...
.
Other uses
* In older
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany, the country of the Germans and German things
**Germania (Roman era)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
and in the German
Kurrent
() is an old form of German-language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as ("cursive script"), ("German script"), and ''German cursive''. Over the history of its use into the first part of the 20th century, many ...
handwriting, as well as older
Danish, a macron is used on some consonants, especially n and m, as a short form for a double consonant (for example, ''n̄'' instead of ''nn'').
* In
Russian cursive
Russian cursive is a variant of the Russian alphabet used for writing by hand. It is typically referred to as ''(rússky) rukopísny shrift'', "(Russian) handwritten font". It is the handwritten form of the modern Russian Cyrillic script, us ...
, as well as in some others based on the
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic 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, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...
(for example,
Bulgarian), a lowercase ''
Т'' looks like a lowercase ''m'', and a macron is often used to distinguish it from ''
Ш'', which looks like a lowercase ''w'' (see ''
Т''). Some writers also underline the letter ''ш'' to reduce ambiguity further.
Also, in some instances, a diacritic will be written like a macron, although it represents another diacritic whose standard form is different:
* In some
Finnish,
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 ...
and
Swedish handwriting, a macron-style umlaut is used for ''
ä'' or ''
ö'' (also ''
õ'' and ''
ü'' in Estonian), sometimes known colloquially as a "lazy man's umlaut". This can also be seen in some modern handwritten
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany, the country of the Germans and German things
**Germania (Roman era)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
.
* In
Norwegian ''ū'', ''ā'', ''ī'', ''ē'' and ''ō'' can be used for decorative purposes both in handwritten and computed
Bokmål
Bokmål () (, ; ) is one of the official written standards for the Norwegian language, alongside Nynorsk. Bokmål is by far the most used written form of Norwegian today, as it is adopted by 85% to 90% of the population in Norway. There is no cou ...
and
Nynorsk
Nynorsk (; ) is one of the two official written standards of the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. From 12 May 1885, it became the state-sanctioned version of Ivar Aasen's standard Norwegian language (''Landsmål''), parallel to the Da ...
or to denote vowel length such as in ''dū'' (you), ''lā'' (infinitive form of to let), lēser (present form of "to read") and ''lūft'' (air). The diacritic is entirely optional, carries no IPA value and is seldom used in modern Norwegian outside of handwriting.
* In informal
Hungarian handwriting, a macron is often a substitute for either a
double acute accent
The double acute accent () is a diacritic mark of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. It is used primarily in Hungarian or Chuvash, and consequently it is sometimes referred to by typographers as hungarumlaut. The signs formed with a regular umlau ...
or an
umlaut (e.g., ''
ö'' or ''
ő''). Because of this ambiguity, using it is often regarded as bad practice.
* In informal handwriting, the
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas
**Spanish cuisine
**Spanish history
**Spanish culture
...
''ñ'' is sometimes written with a macron-shaped tilde: (''n̄'').
Medicine
Continuing previous
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
scribal abbreviation
Scribal abbreviations, or sigla (grammatical number, singular: siglum), are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek language, Greek, Old English and Old Norse.
In modern Textua ...
s, letters with combining macron can be used in various European languages to represent the
overline
An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal and vertical, horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In old mathematical notation, an overline was called a ''vinculum (symbol), vinculum'', a notation fo ...
s indicating various
medical abbreviations, particularly including:
* ā for ("before")
* c̄ for ("with")
* p̄ for ("after")
* q̄ for and its inflections ("every", "each")
* s̄ for ("without")
* x̄ for and its inflections ("except")
Note, however, that abbreviations involving the letter h take their macron halfway up the ascending line rather than at the normal height for unicode macrons and overlines:
ħ. This is separately encoded in
Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
with the symbols using
bar diacritic
A bar or stroke is a modification consisting of a line drawn through a grapheme. It may be used as a diacritic to derive new letters from old ones, or simply as an addition to make a grapheme more distinct from others. It can take the form of a v ...
s and appears shorter than other macrons in many fonts.
Mathematics and science
The
overline
An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal and vertical, horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In old mathematical notation, an overline was called a ''vinculum (symbol), vinculum'', a notation fo ...
is a typographical symbol similar to the macron, used in a number of ways in mathematics and science. For example, it is used to represent
complex conjugation
In mathematics, the complex conjugate of a complex number is the number with an equal real part and an imaginary part equal in magnitude but opposite in sign. That is, if a and b are real numbers, then the complex conjugate of a + bi is a - ...
:
and to represent a
line segment
In geometry, a line segment is a part of a line (mathematics), straight line that is bounded by two distinct endpoints (its extreme points), and contains every Point (geometry), point on the line that is between its endpoints. It is a special c ...
in geometry (e.g.,
),
sample means in statistics (e.g.,
) and
negation
In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation (mathematics), operation that takes a Proposition (mathematics), proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P, P^\prime or \over ...
s in
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...
. It is also used in
Hermann–Mauguin notation
In geometry, Hermann–Mauguin notation is used to represent the symmetry elements in point groups, plane groups and space groups. It is named after the German crystallographer Carl Hermann (who introduced it in 1928) and the French mineralogist ...
.
Music
In music, the
tenuto
In musical notation, ''tenuto'' ( Italian, past participle of ''tenere'', "to hold"), written as a horizontal bar above or below a note, is a direction for the performer to hold or sustain a note for its full length.
Its precise interpretation ...
marking resembles the macron.
The macron is also used in German
lute
A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck (music), neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted.
More specifically, the term "lu ...
tablature
Tablature (or tab for short) is a form of musical notation indicating instrument fingering or the location of the played notes rather than musical pitches.
Tablature is common for fretted stringed instruments such as the guitar, lute or vihuel ...
to distinguish repeating alphabetic characters.
Letters with macron
Technical notes
The
Unicode Standard
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 cha ...
encodes
combining and
precomposed macron characters:
Macron-related Unicode characters not included in the table above:
* CJK
fullwidth variety:
**
*
Kazakhstani tenge
The tenge ( or ; , ; ; Currency symbol, sign: ₸ ; ISO 4217, code: KZT) is the currency of Kazakhstan. It is divided into 100 tiyn (, ).
History
After the breakup of the Soviet Union in December 1991, most of the formerly Soviet republics a ...
**
*
Overline
An overline, overscore, or overbar, is a typographical feature of a horizontal and vertical, horizontal line drawn immediately above the text. In old mathematical notation, an overline was called a ''vinculum (symbol), vinculum'', a notation fo ...
s
* Characters using a
macron below
Macron below is a combining diacritical mark that is used in various orthographies.
A non-combining form is . It is not to be confused with , and . The difference between "macron below" and "low line" is that the latter results in an unbroken ...
instead of above
*
Tone contour
A tone contour or contour tone is a tone in a tonal language which shifts from one pitch to another over the course of the syllable or word. Tone contours are especially common in East Asia, Southeast Asia, West Africa, Nilo-Saharan languages, K ...
transcription characters incorporating a macron:
**
**
**
**
* Two intonation marks historically used by
Antanas Baranauskas for Lithuanian dialectology:
**
**
In
TeX
Tex, TeX, TEX, may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname
* Tex Earnhardt (1930–2020), U.S. businessman
* Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer ...
a macron is created with the command "\=", for example: M\=aori for Māori.
In
OpenOffice OpenOffice or open office may refer to:
Computing Software
* OpenOffice.org (OOo), a discontinued open-source office software suite, originally based on StarOffice
* Apache OpenOffice (AOO), a derivative of OOo by the Apache Software Foundation, ...
, if the extension Compose Special Characters is installed,
a macron may be added by following the letter with a hyphen and pressing the user's predefined shortcut key for composing special characters. A macron may also be added by following the letter with the character's four-digit hex-code, and pressing the user's predefined shortcut key for adding unicode characters.
See also
*
Macron below
Macron below is a combining diacritical mark that is used in various orthographies.
A non-combining form is . It is not to be confused with , and . The difference between "macron below" and "low line" is that the latter results in an unbroken ...
*
Vinculum (symbol)
\overline
= 0.
\overline
Y = \overline
\sqrt
a-\overline = a − (b + c)
bracketing function
Vinculum usage
A vinculum () is a horizontal line used in mathematical notation for various purposes. It may be placed as an ''overline'' or ...
References
External links
Diacritics Project – All you need to design a font with correct accentsKupu o te RāHow to set up the keyboard to type macrons in various operating systems.
{{Latin alphabet, show diacritic =macron
Latin-script diacritics
Greek-script diacritics
Cyrillic-script diacritics
Poetic rhythm