ring (diacritic)

A ring diacritic may appear above or below letters. It may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in various contexts.

Rings

Distinct letter

The character Å (å) is derived from an A with a ring. It is a distinct letter in the Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Walloon, and Chamorro alphabets. For example, the 29-letter Swedish alphabet begins with the basic 26 Latin letters and ends with the three letters Å, Ä, and Ö.

Overring

The character Ů (ů; a Latin U with overring, or kroužek in Czech Republic) is a grapheme in Czech preserved for historic reasons, which identifies a vowel shift. For example, the word for "horse" used to be written ''kóň'', which evolved, along with pronunciation, into ''kuoň''. Ultimately, the vowel disappeared completely, and the ''uo'' evolved into ''ů'', modern form ''kůň''. The letter ''ů'' now has the same pronunciation as the letter '' ú'' (long ), but changes to a short ''o'' when a word is morphed (e.g. nom. '' kůň'' → gen. ''koně'', nom. ''dům'' → gen. ''domu''), thus showing the historical evolution of the language. ''Ů'' cannot occur in initial position, while ''ú'' occurs almost exclusively in initial position or at the beginning of a word root in a compound. These characters are used also in Steuer's Silesian alphabet. The pronunciation has prevailed in some Moravian dialects, as well as in Slovak, which uses the letter ô instead of ů.

The ring is used in some dialects of Emilian-Romagnol to distinguish the sound (å) from (a).

ů was used in Old Lithuanian in Lithuania Minor from the 16th till the beginning of the 20th century and for a shorter time in 16th-century Lithuania Major for diphthong .

The ring was used in the Lithuanian Cyrillic alphabet promoted by Russian authorities in the last quarter of the 19th century with the letter У̊ / у̊ used to represent the diphthong (now written ''uo'' in Lithuanian orthography).

ẘ and ẙ are used in the ISO 233 romanization of the Arabic alphabet. A fatḥah followed by the letter ⟨ﻭ⟩ (wāw) with a sukūn (ـَوْ) is romanized as aẘ. A fatḥah followed by the letter ⟨ﻱ⟩ (yā’) with a sukūn over it (ـَيْ) is romanized as aẙ.

Ring upon e (e̊) is used by certain dialectologists of Walloon (especially Jean-Jacques Gaziaux) to note the vowel typically replacing and in the Brabant province central Walloon dialects. The difficulty of type-writing it has led some writers to prefer ''ë'' for the same sound.

Many more characters can be created in Unicode using the combining character , including the above-mentioned у̊ (Cyrillic у with overring) or ń̊ (n with acute and overring).

The standalone (spacing) symbol is .
The unrelated, but nearly identical degree symbol is .

Although similar in appearance, it is not to be confused with the Japanese '' handakuten'' (), a diacritic used with the ''kana'' for syllables starting with ''h'' to indicate that they should instead be pronounced with . In Japanese dialectology, handakuten is used with ''kana'' for syllables starting with ''k'' to indicate their consonant is , with syllables starting with ''r'' to indicate their consonant is ''l'' though this does not change the pronunciation, with ''kana'' ''u'' to indicate its morph into ''kana'' ''n'', and with ''kana'' ''i'' to indicate the vowel is to be said as .

In Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, there are two ring characters: ᐤ (Cree and Ojibwe final ''w'', or Sayisi ''o'') and ᣞ (Cree and Ojibwe final ''w'' or final ''y''). This second smaller ring can combine as a diacritic ring above in Moose Cree and Moose-Cree influenced Ojibwe as a final ''y''; in Inuktitut, the ring above the /_i/ character turns it into a /_aai/ character. In Western Cree, /_w_w/ sequence is represented as ᐝ.

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Underring

Unicode encodes the underring at

The underring is used in IPA to indicate voicelessness, and in Indo-European studies or in Sanskrit transliteration (IAST) to indicate syllabicity of r, l, m, n etc. (e.g. corresponding to IPA ). R with ring below, L with ring below, R with ring below and macron, and L with ring below and macron were actually proposed for Unicode because of their use in Sanskrit transliteration and the CSX+ Indic character set. However, the proposal was rejected, because they are already encoded as sequences.

In Pashto romanization, ''ḁ'' is used to represent .

Examples:
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Emilian-Romagnol

In Romagnol, ''e̥'' is used to represent in diphthongs, e.g. Santarcangelo dialect ''ame̥ig'' 'friend', ''ne̥ud'' 'naked'. In Emilian, ''e̥'' can be used to represent unstressed in very accurate transcriptions.

Half rings

Half rings also exist as diacritic marks; these are characters and . These characters are used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, respectively for mediopalatal pronunciation and strong-onset vowels. These characters may be used in the International Phonetic Alphabet, denoting less and more roundedness, as alternatives to half rings below and . They are here given with the lowercase a: a͑ and a͗, a̜ and a̹.

is similar in appearance but differs from a͗ because its compatibility decomposition uses instead of .

Other, similar signs are in use in Armenian: the and the .

Breve and inverted breve are also shaped like half rings, respectively, the bottom and top half of a circle.

Other uses

The ring is used in the transliteration of the Abkhaz to represent the letter ҩ. It may also be used in place of the abbreviation symbol ''॰'' when transliterating the Devanagari alphabet.

Letters with ring

Similar marks

The ring as a diacritic mark should not be confused with the dot or diacritic marks, or with the degree sign °.

The half ring as a diacritic mark should not be confused with the comma or ogonek diacritic marks.

References

External links

Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ring (Diacritic)
Latin-script diacritics