A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin brevis "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ** ◌̆ , shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As** used**** in**** Ancient Greek,**** it**** is**** also**** called**** , βραχύ.**** It resembles the caron ( ◌̌, the wedge or háček in Czech, mäkčeň in Slovak) but is rounded, in contrast to the angular tip of the caron. In many forms of Latin, ◌̆ 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, Ancient Greek, Tuareg 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, a breve is used for Й. In Belarusian, it is used for both the Cyrillic Ў (semivowel U) and in the Latin (Łacinka) Ŭ. Ў was also used in Cyrillic Uzbek under the Soviet Union. The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet uses a breve on Ӂ to represent a voiced postalveolar affricate (corresponding to ⟨g⟩ 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, u with breve (ŭ) represents a non-syllabic u in diphthongs, 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, a breve over a phonetic symbol is used to indicate extra-shortness.

Other uses

In other languages, it is used for other purposes.

Letters with breve

Ă|Ăă · Ắắ · Ằằ · Ẳẳ · Ẵẵ · Ặặ · C̆c̆ · Ĕĕ · Ḝḝ · Ğ|Ğğ · Ḫ|Ḫḫ · Ĭĭ · K̆k̆ · M̆m̆ · N̆n̆ · Ŏŏ · Œ̆œ̆ · P̆p̆ · R̆r̆ · T̆t̆ · Ŭ|Ŭŭ · V̆v̆ · X̆x̆ · Y̆y̆Ᾰ|Ᾰᾰ · Ῐ|Ῐῐ · Ῠ|ῨῠӐ|Ӑӑ · Ӗ|Ӗӗ · Ӂ|Ӂӂ · Й|Йй · Ў|Ўў

Breve below

The breve below is diacritic with the same appearance as the conventional breve, except that it is placed under the letter (or space) to be marked. There are just two precomposed character code-points: and. For other uses, it is rendered as a combining character,. Traditional editions of Spanish vocal sheet music use the 'breve below' to indicate elision. Modern editions tend to use a (freestanding) underscore.

Encoding

Unicode and HTML code (decimal numeric character reference) for breve characters. In LaTeX the controls \u{o} and \breve{o} put a breve over the letter o.