The circumflex ( '''ˆ''' ) (often called a "hat") is a Diacritic mark used in written Greek , French , Esperanto , Norwegian , Romanian , Slovak , Vietnamese , Japanese Romaji , Welsh , Portuguese , Italian , Afrikaans , and other languages.
â ê î ô û
Length
The circumflex accent marks a Long Vowel in the Orthography or Transliteration of several languages.
In Transcription of Akkadian , it is used to indicate a long vowel resulting from an Aleph contraction.
In French , the circumflex is used on ''â'', ''ê'', ''î'', ''ô'', ''û'', and, in some varieties of the language, such as in Belgian pronunciation, these vowels are often long; ''fête'' (party) is longer than ''fait'' (fact).
In Standard Friulian it is used on each of the five vowels to mark that vowel as long; since long vowels are a typical feature of Friulian, the circumflex is used a lot.
In Jèrriais , the circumflex also marks a long vowel.
In Kunrei-shiki Romanized Japanese , the circumflex marks long vowels. It is also occasionally used as a Surrogate for the Macron for marking long vowels in the Hepburn system.
In Welsh Language , the circumflex accent gives a vowel a long sound, for example ''môr'' versus ''mor''.
Other regular uses
- In Esperanto , it is used on '' ĉ '', '' ĝ '', '' ĥ '', '' ĵ '', '' ŝ ''. It indicates a completely different consonant from the unaccented form, and is considered a separate letter for purposes of Collation . See Esperanto Orthography .
- In French , it generally marks the former presence of the letter ''s'' in the spelling of the word – for example, ''hôpital'' (hospital), ''forêt'' (forest); note that the older spelling is the current one in English. ''Fenêtre'' (window), for instance, is derived from the Latin word ''fenestra.'' Certain close Homophone s are distinguished by the circumflex, for instance ''cote'' and ''côte'' (the former meaning "level", "mark", the latter meaning "rib" or "coast"). The letter ''ê'' is also normally pronounced Open , like ''è''. In the usual pronunciations of central and northern France , ''ô'' is pronounced Close , like ''eau''; in Southern France, no distinction is made between Close and Open ''o''. See Use Of The Circumflex In French .
- In version appears only in all-capitals inscriptions.
- In Slovak , circumflex (vokáň) turns the letter "o" into a diphthong ''ô'' //.
- In Welsh the circumflex (colloquially known as the ''to bach'' -- "little roof") is used on the vowels ''a, e, i, o, u, w, y'' to differentiate between other words that have the same spelling.
Exceptional use
- In English the circumflex, like other diacriticals, is sometimes retained on Loanword s that used it in the original language; for example, ''rôle''. In Britain in the Eighteenth Century --before the cheap Penny Post and an era in which paper was taxed--the circumflex was used in postal letters to save room in an analogy with the French use. Specifically, the letters "ugh" were replaced when they were silent in the most common words, e.g., "thô" for "though", "thorô" for "thorough", and "brôt" for "brought" — similar to the way in which people today abbreviate words in Text Messages . This could have led to spelling simplification, but did not.
- In Italian it is used in plurals of singulars ending with ''-io'', thus ending them with a longer ''i.'' In modern Italian this is accomplished with a double or just a single ''i'' as in ''varî'', ''varj'', ''varii'', ''vari'' ("various", plural of ''vario'').
- In Norwegian , it is used, with the exception of loan words, on ''ô'' and ''ê'', almost exclusively in the words "fôr" (from Norse ''fóðr''), meaning "animal food", ''lêr'', meaning "skin" (Norse ''leðr'') and "vêr" (Norse ''veðr''), meaning "weather".
The ISO-8859-1 character encoding includes the letters ''â'', ''ê'', ''î'', ''ô'', ''û'', and their respective Capital forms. Dozens more letters with the circumflex are available in Unicode . Unicode also uses the circumflex as a combining character.
The circumflex receives its English name from Latin ''circumflexus'' (''bent about'')--a translation of the Greek ''perispomene'' (περισπωμένη).
- The circumflex (or Caret ) character is also used to represent Xor in ANSI C:
2^3 = 1
External links
See also
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