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A breve (, less often , neuter form of the
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
"short, brief") is the
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 ''diacrit ...
mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in
Ancient 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 Archaic pe ...
, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in Slovak) but is rounded, in contrast to the angular tip of the caron. In many forms of
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
, ˘ is used for a shorter, softer variant of a vowel, such as "Ĭ", where the sound is nearly identical to the English /i/. (See: Latin IPA)


Length

The breve sign indicates a short vowel, as opposed to the macron ¯, which indicates long vowels, in academic transcription. It is often used that way in dictionaries and textbooks of
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
,
Ancient 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 Archaic pe ...
,
Tuareg The Tuareg people (; also spelled Twareg or Touareg; endonym: ''Imuhaɣ/Imušaɣ/Imašeɣăn/Imajeɣăn'') are a large Berber ethnic group that principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern Al ...
and other languages. However, there is a frequent convention of indicating only the long vowels. It is then understood that a vowel with no macron is short. If the vowel length is unknown, a breve as well as a macron are used in historical linguistics (Ā̆ ā̆ Ē̆ ē̆ Ī̆ ī̆ Ō̆ ō̆ Ū̆ ū̆ Ȳ̆ ȳ̆). In
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, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking c ...
, a breve is used for '' Й''. In Belarusian, it is used for both the Cyrillic '' Ў'' (semivowel U) and in the Latin (
Łacinka 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 ...
) ''Ŭ''. ''Ў'' was also used in Cyrillic Uzbek under the
Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
. The
Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet is a Cyrillic alphabet designed for the Romanian language spoken in the Soviet Union ( Moldovan) and was in official use from 1924 to 1932 and 1938 to 1989 (and still in use today in the breakaway Moldovan reg ...
uses a breve on '' Ӂ'' to represent a voiced postalveolar affricate (corresponding to before a front vowel in the Latin script for Moldovan). In Chuvash, a breve is used for Cyrillic letters Ӑ (''A''-breve) and Ӗ (''E''-breve). In Itelmen orthography, it is used for Ӑ, О̆ and Ў. The traditional Cyrillic breve differs in shape and is thicker on the edges of the curve and thinner in the middle, as opposed to the Latin one, but the Unicode encoding is the same. In Emilian, ''ĕ ŏ'' are used to represent in dialects where also long occur. In
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 communic ...
, ''u'' with breve (ŭ) represents a non-syllabic ''u'' in
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
s , analogous to Belarusian '' ў''. In the transcription of Sinhala, the breve over an ''m'' or an ''n'' indicates a prenasalized consonant; for example, ''n̆da'' is used to represent . 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 standardized representation ...
, a breve over a phonetic symbol is used to indicate extra-shortness.


Other uses

In other languages, it is used for other purposes. * In
Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania ** Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...
, ''A'' with breve represents / ə/, as in ''măr'' (apple). * G-breve appears in the
Azerbaijani Azerbaijani may refer to: * Something of, or related to Azerbaijan * Azerbaijanis * Azerbaijani language See also * Azerbaijan (disambiguation) * Azeri (disambiguation) * Azerbaijani cuisine * Culture of Azerbaijan The culture of Azerbaijan ...
, Kazakh, Crimean Tatar,
Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary
is an umbrella term for different
, and Turkish alphabets. In Turkish, ''ğ'' lengthens the preceding vowel. It is thus placed between two vowels and is silent in standard Turkish but may be pronounced in some regional dialects or varieties closer to Ottoman Turkish. * The breve, together with the
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" ...
and horn, are used in the
Vietnamese language Vietnamese ( vi, tiếng Việt, links=no) is an Austroasiatic language originating from Vietnam where it is the national and official language. Vietnamese is spoken natively by over 70 million people, several times as many as the rest of the ...
to represent additional vowels. * The McCune-Reischauer romanization system of the Korean alphabet's script uses breves over ''o'' and ''u'' to represent the vowels ㅓ (ŏ) and ㅡ (ŭ).For example, that word 한글 han-geul is romanized in McCune-Reischauer as ''han'gŭl''. The spelling ''han-geul'' is based on
South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...
's
Revised Romanization of Korean Revised Romanization of Korean () is the official Korean language romanization system in South Korea. It was developed by the National Academy of the Korean Language from 1995 and was released to the public on 7 July 2000 by South Korea's Mini ...
adopted in 2000 in part for ease in computer use, not on McCune-Reischauer. It is common, for convenience, to omit writing all diacritical marks in McCune-Reishchauer including breves, in which case the word is spelled ''hangul'' not ''han'gŭl''.
North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...
uses a variant of McCune-Reischauer that also utilizes breves for those two vowels.
* H-breve below Ḫ ḫ is used to transliterate the
Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
character Ḫāʾ () in
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 ...
. It is also used to transliterate
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-syllabic ...
,
Hittite cuneiform Hittite cuneiform is the implementation of cuneiform script used in writing the Hittite language. The surviving corpus of Hittite texts is preserved in cuneiform on clay tablets dating to the 2nd millennium BC (roughly spanning the 17th to 12th ...
, and
Egyptian hieroglyphs Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1, ...
. *On
German language German ( ) is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Italian province of South Tyrol. It is also a ...
maps, a double breve is often used in abbreviated placenames that end in ''-b͝g.,'' short for ''-burg,'' a common suffix originally meaning “castle”. This prevents misinterpretation as ''-berg,'' another common suffix in placenames (meaning “mountain”). Thus, for example, ''Freib͝g.'' stands for '' Freiburg,'' not '' Freiberg.'' *Certain transcription systems for certain
varieties of Chinese Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of mai ...
employ the breve to represent one of the tones, including
Foochow Romanized Foochow Romanized, also known as Bàng-uâ-cê (BUC for short; ) or Hók-ciŭ-uâ Lò̤-mā-cê (), is a Latin alphabet for the Fuzhou dialect of Eastern Min adopted in the middle of the 19th century by Western missionaries. It had varied at d ...
for the Fuzhou dialect of Eastern Min, and
Kienning Colloquial Romanized The Kienning Colloquial Romanized Alphabet (建寧府土腔羅馬字, ) is a romanization system adopted by Western missionaries to compile the Kienning dialect (modern day Jian'ou City) of the Northern Min language in the Fujian Province of C ...
for the Jian'ou dialect of Northern Min (which also uses the caron). * I-breve (Ĭ, ĭ) is used in the dialects of Crimean Tatar language spoken in
Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
. It pronounce sound like in ''Tatar tĭlĭ'' (Tatar language). *In Khmer, ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, œ̆, and ŭ are used in Khmer romanization, e.g. ''siĕm reăp'' (Siem Reap). * In the
Syriac language The Syriac language (; syc, / '), also known as Syriac Aramaic (''Syrian Aramaic'', ''Syro-Aramaic'') and Classical Syriac ܠܫܢܐ ܥܬܝܩܐ (in its literary and liturgical form), is an Aramaic language, Aramaic dialect that emerged during ...
s, ''ĕ'' is used to denote an "eh" or /ˈɛ/ sound. * The
ISO 259 ISO 259 is a series of international standards for the romanization of Hebrew characters into Latin characters, dating to 1984, with updated ISO 259-2 (a simplification, disregarding several vowel signs, 1994) and ISO 259-3 ( Phonemic Conversion, ...
Romanization of Hebrew uses ''ă'', ''ḝ'', and ''ŏ'' for reduced vowels.


Letters with breve


Encoding

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
and
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...
code (decimal numeric character reference) for breve characters. In LaTeX the controls \u and \breve put a breve over the letter o.


See also

* Caron * Macron * Inverted breve


Notes


External links


Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents
{{Latin script, , breve Greek-script diacritics Poetic rhythm Latin-script diacritics Cyrillic-script diacritics