A
caron ( ˇ ) or
háček (, ), also known as a
wedge,
inverted circumflex,
inverted hat, is a
diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate present or historical
palatalization,
iotation, or
postalveolar pronunciation in the orthography of some
Baltic,
Slavic,
Finno-Lappic, and other languages.
It looks similar to a
breve, but has a sharp tip, like an inverted
circumflex (ˆ ), while a breve is rounded. Compare the caron: Ǎ ǎ Ě ě Ǐ ǐ Ǒ ǒ Ǔ ǔ to the breve: Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ.
The left (downward) stroke is usually thicker than the right (upward) stroke in
serif typefaces.
The caron is also used as a symbol or modifier in mathematics.
Names
Usage differs as to the name of this diacritic. In the field of typography, the term "caron" seems to be more popular. In linguistics, the tendency is to use
háček.
The term
caron is used in the official names of
Unicode characters (e.g., "Latin capital letter Z with caron"). Its earliest known use was in computing references in the mid-1980s. Its actual origin remains obscure, but some have suggested that it may derive from a fusion of
caret and
macron. Though this may be
folk etymology, it is plausible, particularly in the absence of other suggestions.
The name
háček appears in most English dictionaries; the
Oxford English Dictionary gives its earliest citation as 1953. In
Czech,
háček means "small
hook", the diminutive form of
hák. The Czech plural form is
háčky.
In
Slovak it is called
mäkčeň (i.e. "softener" or "
palatalization mark"), in
Slovenian strešica ("little
roof") or
kljukica ("little hook"), in
Croatian and
Serbian kvaka or
kvačica (also "small hook"), in
Lithuanian paukščiukas ("little bird"),
katus ("roof") in
Estonian,
hattu ("hat") in
Finnish, and
ičášleče ("wedge") in
Lakota (a Native American language).
Origin
The caron evolved from the
dot above diacritic, which was introduced into
Czech orthography (along with the
acute accent) by
Jan Hus in his
De Ortographia Bohemica (1412). The original form still exists in
Polish ż.
Usage
For the fricatives
š ,
ž , and the affricate
č only, the caron is used in the Finno-Lappic languages which use the Latin alphabet, such as
Estonian,
Finnish,
Karelian and some
Sami languages. In Finnish and Estonian, it is limited to transcribing foreign names and loanwords (albeit common loanwords such as
šekki 'cheque'); the sounds (and letters) are native and common in Karelian and Sami.
The caron is also used in the
Romany alphabet. The
Faggin-Nazzi writing system for the
Friulian language makes use of the caron over the letters
c,
g, and
s.
The caron is also often used as a diacritical mark on consonants for
romanization of text from non-Latin writing systems, particularly in the
scientific transliteration of Slavic languages. Philologists—and the standard Finnish orthography—often prefer using it to express the sounds that in English require a digraph (
sh, ch, and
zh) because most Slavic languages use only one character to spell these sounds (the key exceptions are Polish
sz and
cz). Its use for this purpose can even be found in America, because certain
atlases use it in romanization of foreign
place names. On the typographical side, Š/š and Ž/ž are likely the easiest among non-Western European diacritic characters to adopt for Westerners because the two are part of the
Windows-1252 character encoding.
It is also used as an accent mark, that is, to indicate a change in the pronunciation of a vowel. The main example is in
Pinyin for
Chinese, where it represents a falling-rising tone. It is used in transliterations of
Thai to indicate a rising tone.
The caron represents a rising tone in the
International Phonetic Alphabet. It is used in
Americanist phonetic notation as a diacritic to indicate various types of pronunciation.
Writing and printing carons
In printed text, the caron combined with certain letters (lower-case ť, ď, ľ, and upper-case Ľ) is reduced to a small stroke. This only rarely happens in handwritten text. Although the stroke looks similar to an
apostrophe, there is a significant difference in
kerning. Using apostrophe in place of a caron looks very unprofessional though it can be found on goods produced in foreign countries and imported to Slovakia or the Czech Republic (compare t' to ť, L'ahko to Ľahko). (Apostrophes appearing as palatalization marks in some
Finnic languages, such as
Võro and
Karelian, are not forms of caron either.) Foreigners also sometimes mistake the caron for the
acute accent (compare Ĺ to Ľ, ĺ to ľ).
List of letters
A complete list of
Czech and
Slovak letters and
digraphs with the háček/caron:
- Š/š ( — similar to 'sh' in she, e.g. in Škoda )
- Ž/ž ( — similar to 's' in treasure, e.g. žal which means "sorrow")
- Ř/ř (only in Czech: special fricative trill , transcribed as in pre-1989 IPA, pronounced roughly as a compound of trilled and , e.g. Antonín Dvořák )
- Ď/ď, Ť/ť, Ň/ň (palatals, , , , slightly different from palatalized consonants as found in Russian): Ďábel a sťatý kůň which means "The Devil and a beheaded horse")
- Ľ/ľ (only in Slovak: pronounced as palatal : podnikateľ means "businessman")
- DŽ/Dž/dž (considered a single letter in Slovak. džungľa means "jungle" - almost identical to the "j" sound in jungle and the "g" sound in genius. It is somewhat rare.)
- Dž/dž (considered a digraph in Czech where letters are capitalized separately: džungle means "jungle" - almost identical to the "j" sound in jungle and the "g" sound in genius. Somewhat rare)
- Ě/ě (only in Czech) indicates mostly palatalization of preceding consonant: "dě", "tě", "ně" is , , ; but mě is , and "bě", "pě", "vě", "fě" are .
A complete list of
Lower Sorbian and
Upper Sorbian letters and digraphs with the háček/caron:
- Č/č () — similar to 'ch' in cheap
- Š/š () — similar to 'sh' in she
- Ž/ž () — similar to 's' in treasure
- Ř/ř (only in Upper Sorbian: ) - similar to 'sh' in she
- Tř/tř (digraph, only in Upper Sorbian) - soft sound
- Ě/ě () - similar to 'e' in bed
Of the Baltic and Slavic languages,
Serbian (Latin alphabet),
Croatian,
Bosnian,
Slovenian,
Latvian and
Lithuanian use Č/č, Š/š and Ž/ž. The digraph Dž/dž is also used in these languages, but only considered a separate letter in Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian. The
Belarusian Lacinka alphabet also contains the digraph (as a separate letter), and Latin transctiptions of
Bulgarian and
Macedonian may also use them at times for transcription of the letter-combination ДЖ (Bulgarian) and the letter Џ (Macedonian).
Of the
Finno-Ugric languages,
Estonian (and transcriptions to
Finnish) use Š/š and Ž/ž, and
Karelian and some
Sami languages use Č/č, Š/š and Ž/ž — Dž is not a separate letter. (Skolt Sami has more, see below.) Č is present because it may be phonemically
geminate: in Karelian, the phoneme 'čč' is found, and is distinct from 'č', which is not the case in Finnish or Estonian, where only one length is recognized for 'tš'. (Incidentally, in transcriptions, the Finnish orthography has to employ complicated notations like
mettšä or even the
mettshä to express Karelian
meččä.) On some Finnish keyboards, it is possible to write these letters by typing
s or
z while holding right
Alt key or
AltGr key.
Notice that these are
not palatalized, but postalveolar consonants. For example, Estonian
Nissi (palatalized) is distinct from
nišši (postalveolar).
Palatalization is typically ignored in spelling, but some Karelian and Võro orthographies use an
apostrophe (') or an acute accent (´). In Finnish and Estonian,
š and
ž (and in Estonian, very rarely
č) appear in loanwords and foreign
proper names only and, when not available, can be substituted with 'h', e.g., 'sh' for 'š', in print.
Skolt Sami uses (ezh) to mark the alveolar affricate , thus (ezh-caron or edzh (edge)) marks the postalveolar affricate . In addition to Č, Š, Ž and , Skolt Sami also uses the caron – inconsistently – to mark the palatal stops and . More often than not, these are geminated, e.g.,
"to get".
Finnish
Romani uses ȟ.
Lakota uses Č/č, Š/š, Ž/ž, Ǧ/ǧ (voiced post-velar fricative) and Ȟ/ȟ (plain post-velar fricative).
Pashto uses Ď/ď, Ň/ň, Ř/ř, Š/š, Ť/ť and Ž/ž to indicate retroflex consonants.
The
DIN 31635 standard for transliteration of
Arabic uses Ǧ/ǧ to represent the letter ج
ǧīm on account of the inconsistent pronunciation of
J in European languages, the variable pronunciation of the letter of the letter in educated Arabic, and the desire of the DIN committee to have a one-to-one correspondence of Arabic to Latin letters in their system.
Other uses
The caron is also used in
Mandarin Chinese pinyin romanization and orthographies of several other
tonal languages to indicate the "falling-rising"
tone (third tone in Mandarin). The caron can be placed over the vowels ǎ, ě, ǐ, ǒ, ǔ, ǚ. The alternatives to caron are
breve or number 3 after the syllable, e.g.: hǎo = hao3.
The caron is used in the
New Transliteration System of
D'ni in the symbol š to represent the sound [ʃ] ("sh").
Many alphabets of African languages use the caron for marking rising tone as in the
African reference alphabet.
The characters Ě/ě are a part of the
Unicode Latin Extended-A set because they occur in Czech, while the rest are in Latin Extended-B, which often causes an inconsistent appearance.
Software
Unicode
For legacy reasons most letters which can carry carons exist as
precomposed characters in
Unicode, but a caron can also be added to any letter by using the
combining character U+030C COMBINING CARON, for example: .
TeX
In
TeX, a caron can be inserted using the control sequence
\v in text, or
\check in mathematics. For example:
$\check{x}$
Special arrangement is necessary to get the alternate versions of the háček above l, d and t, such as (in
LaTeX)
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}, or
\usepackage[Czech]{babel}.
Macintosh
On
Mac OS X's U.S. Extended and Irish Extended keyboard layouts, the caron is typed by pressing
option+v+(letter).
Microsoft Word
In
Microsoft Word, you can usually find letters with carons by clicking Insert → Symbol → Symbols. Select "(normal text)".
XFree86 and X.Org
In recent versions of
XFree86/
X.Org servers, letters with carons can be typed as a
compose sequence
c , e.g. pressing
compose-key c e yields the letter ě.
See also
