| Colon | |
|---|---|
| ꞉ | |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Latin |
| Type | alphabetic |
| Language of origin | Americanist phonetic notation, Erima, Gizra, Go꞉bosi, Gwahatike, Kaluli, Kamula, Kasua, Kuni-Boazi, Zimakani, Budu, Sabaot, Grebo,Oʼodham, Zuni, Hupa,Sayula Popoluca, Mohawk |
| Sound values | [ː] |
| In Unicode | U+A789 |
| This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. | |
Thecolon alphabetic letter꞉ is used in a number of languages and phonetic transcription systems, forvowel length inAmericanist Phonetic Notation, for the vowels⟨a꞉⟩[ɛ] and⟨o꞉⟩[ɔ] in a number of languages of Papua New Guinea, and for grammaticaltone in several languages of Africa. It resembles but differs from thecolon punctuation mark,:. In some fonts, the two dots are placed a bit closer together than those of the punctuation colon so that the two characters are visually distinct. InUnicode it has been assigned the codeU+A789 ꞉MODIFIER LETTER COLON, which behaves like a letter rather than a punctuation mark in electronic texts. In practice, however, anASCII colon is frequently used for the letter (U+003A :COLON).
InWindows andmacOS, the letter colon can be used to emulate the punctuation colon in file names, where the punctuation colon is a reserved character that cannot be used.
Several of theNative American languages of North America use thecolon (U+003A :COLON) to indicate vowel length.Zuni is one. Other languages includeHupa ofCalifornia,Oʼodham of Arizona,Sayula Popoluca of Mexico andMohawk of Ontario. Still others use ahalf colon (just the top dot of the colon, or amiddot,U+00B7 ·MIDDLE DOT,[1], not to be confused withU+A78F ꞏLATIN LETTER SINOLOGICAL DOT[2] or other dot characters). Both conventions derive from Americanist phonetic notation (below).
The letter colon (U+A789 ꞉MODIFIER LETTER COLON) distinct from and generally smaller than the punctuation colon, is used as a grammatical tone letter inBudu in theDemocratic Republic of the Congo, inSabaot inKenya, and in someGrebo inLiberia[3]. It is also used in several languages ofPapua New Guinea:Erima,Gizra,Go꞉bosi,Gwahatike,Kaluli,Kamula,Kasua,Kuni-Boazi andZimakani.[4]
In Erima, the letter colon is used before a vowel lettera oru to indicate nasalization, for exampleh꞉aambi "yam",꞉uwai "a bee".[5]
In Gizra, the letter colon is used in the digraphu꞉ /ɨ/ distinct from the letteru /u/. The digraph doesn’t often occur at the end of words, but is still distinct from a word ending withu followed by the punctuation colon.[6]
In Go꞉bosi, the letter colon is used as a diacritic to distinguisho꞉ /o/ fromo /ɔ/.[7]
In Kaluli, the letter colon is used as a diacritic to distinguisha꞉ /ɛ/ froma /a/, ando꞉ /ɔ/ fromo /o/.[8]
In Kamula, the letter colon is used as a diacritic to distinguisha꞉ /ɛ/ froma /a/.[9]
In Kasua, the letter colon is used as a diacritic to distinguisha꞉ /æ/ froma /ɑ/.[10]
In Kuni-Boazi the letter colon is used after a vowel letter to indicate grammatical vowel lengthening, for examplegemanqatam "when he talked" andge꞉manqatam "when he talked about it".[11].
InAmericanist phonetic notation, a colon may be used to indicatevowel length. This convention is somewhat less common than the half-colon.
| ːˑ | |
|---|---|
IPA length mark | |
| In Unicode | U+02D0 ːMODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLON U+02D1 ˑMODIFIER LETTER HALF TRIANGULAR COLON |
| Different from | |
| Different from | U+003A :COLON |
In theInternational Phonetic Alphabet, a triangular or trapezoidal colon-like letter is used to indicate that the precedingconsonant orvowel is long. Its form is that of two triangles or trapezoids pointing toward each other rather than the two dots of Americanist notation. It is available in Unicode asU+02D0 ːMODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLON. If the upper triangle is used without the lower one (U+02D1 ˑMODIFIER LETTER HALF TRIANGULAR COLON), it designates ahalf-long vowel or consonant.[12]
TheUralic Phonetic Alphabet usesU+02F8 ˸MODIFIER LETTER RAISED COLON.[13]
00B7 · MIDDLE DOT [...] used as a vowel length mark (part of words) in many Amerindian orthographies
The representative glyph for U+A78F is larger than a typical middle dot used as punctuation, to avoid visual confusion with U+00B7 · MIDDLE DOT. Use of the sinological dot should be limited to the appropriate scholarly contexts; it is not intended as a letter substitution for other functions of MIDDLE DOT.
A789 ꞉ MODIFIER LETTER COLON [...] used as a tone letter in some orthographies [...] Budu (Congo), Sabaot (Kenya), Grebo (Liberia), and several Papua New Guinea languages