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Ring |
Aringdiacritic may appear above or below letters. It may be combined with someletters of the extendedLatin alphabets in various contexts.
The characterÅ (å) is derived from anA with a ring. It is a distinctletter in theDanish,Norwegian,Swedish,Finnish,Walloon, andChamorro alphabets. For example, the 29-letter Swedish alphabet begins with thebasic 26 Latin letters and ends with the three lettersÅ,Ä, andÖ.
The character Ů (ů), a LatinU with overring, orkroužek, is agrapheme inCzech preserved for historic reasons, and represented avowel shift. For example, the word for "horse" used to be writtenkóň, which evolved, along with pronunciation, intokuoň. Ultimately, the vowel[o] disappeared completely, and theuo evolved intoů, modern formkůň. The letterů now has the same pronunciation as the letterú (long[uː]), but changes to a shorto when a word is morphed (e.g. nom.kůň → gen.koně, nom.dům → gen.domu), thus showing the historical evolution of the language.Ů can only occur in medial position, whileú occurs almost exclusively in initial position or at the beginning of a wordroot in a compound. These characters are used also inSteuer's Silesian alphabet. The[uo] pronunciation has prevailed in someMoravian dialects, as well as inSlovak, which uses the letterô instead of ů.
The ring is used in some dialects ofEmilian andRomagnol to distinguish the sound/ʌ/ (å) from/a/ (a).
ů was used in OldLithuanian inLithuania Minor from the 16th till the beginning of the 20th century and for a shorter time in 16th-centuryLithuania Major for diphthong[uo].
The ring was used in the LithuanianCyrillic alphabet promoted by Russian authorities in the last quarter of the 19th century with the letterУ̊ / у̊ used to represent the/wɔ/ diphthong (now writtenuo in Lithuanian orthography).
ẘ and ẙ are used in theISO 233 romanization of theArabic alphabet. A fatḥah followed by the letter ⟨ﻭ⟩ (wāw) with a sukūn (ـَوْ) is romanized as aẘ. A fatḥah followed by the letter ⟨ﻱ⟩ (yā’) with a sukūn over it (ـَيْ) is romanized as aẙ.
Ring upon e (e̊) is used by certaindialectologists ofWalloon (especiallyJean-Jacques Gaziaux) to note the/ə/ vowel typically replacing/i/ and/y/ in theBrabant province central Walloon dialects. The difficulty of type-writing it has led some writers to preferë for the same sound.
The underring is used inIPA to indicatevoicelessness, and inIndo-European studies or inSanskrit transliteration (IAST) to indicatesyllabicity ofsonorants.
InPashto romanization,⟨ḁ⟩ is used to represent/ə/.[1]
InEmilian,⟨e̥⟩ can be used to represent unstressed/ə/ in very accurate transcriptions.[citation needed]
InRomagnol,⟨e̥⟩ is used to represent/ə/ in diphthongs, e.g.Santarcangelo dialectame̥ig[aˈməiɡ] 'friend',ne̥ud[ˈnəud] 'naked'.[citation needed]
Half rings also exist as diacritic marks; these are charactersU+0351 ◌͑COMBINING LEFT HALF RING ABOVE andU+0357 ◌͗COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING ABOVE. These characters are used in theUralic Phonetic Alphabet, respectively for mediopalatal pronunciation and strong-onset vowels. These characters may be used in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet, denoting less and moreroundedness, as alternatives to half rings belowU+031C ◌̜COMBINING LEFT HALF RING BELOW andU+0339 ◌̹COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING BELOW. They are here given with the lowercase a: a͑ and a͗, a̜ and a̹.
U+1E9A ẚLATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH RIGHT HALF RING is similar in appearance but differs from a͗ because itscompatibility decomposition usesU+02BE ʾMODIFIER LETTER RIGHT HALF RING instead ofU+0357 ◌͗COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING ABOVE.
Other, similar signs are in use inArmenian: theU+0559 ◌ՙARMENIAN MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING and theU+055A ◌՚ARMENIAN APOSTROPHE.
Breve andinverted breve are also shaped like half rings, respectively, the bottom and top half of a circle.
The ring is used in the transliteration ofAbkhaz to represent the letter ҩ. It may also be used in place of the abbreviation symbol॰ when transliterating theDevanagari alphabet.
Many more characters can be created inUnicode using thecombining characterU+030A ◌̊COMBINING RING ABOVE, including the above-mentioned у̊ (Cyrillic у with overring) or ń̊ (n with acute and overring).
The standalone (spacing) symbol isU+02DA ˚RING ABOVE.The unrelated, but nearly identical degree symbol isU+00B0 °DEGREE SIGN.
Although similar in appearance, it is not to be confused with the Japanesehandakuten (U+309A ◌゚COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK), a diacritic used with thekana for syllables starting withh to indicate that they should instead be pronounced with[p]. In Japanese dialectology, handakuten is used withkana for syllables starting withk to indicate their consonant is[ŋ], with syllables starting withr to indicate their consonant isl though this does not change the pronunciation, withkanau to indicate its morph intokanan, and withkanai to indicate the vowel is to be said as[ɨ].
InCanadian Aboriginal Syllabics, there are two ring characters: ᐤ (Cree andOjibwe finalw, orSayisio) and ᣞ (Cree and Ojibwe finalw or finaly). This second smaller ring can combine as a diacritic ring above inMoose Cree and Moose-Cree influenced Ojibwe as a finaly; inInuktitut, the ring above the /_i/ character turns it into a /_aai/ character. In Western Cree, /_w_w/ sequence is represented as ᐝ.
In addition to the combining character option, Unicode has someprecomposed characters:
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Unicode encodes the underring as a combining character atU+0325 ◌̥COMBINING RING BELOW. Unicode also has precomposed characters for the letters⟨A⟩ and⟨a⟩ with underring (U+1E00 ḀLATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING BELOW andU+1E01 ḁLATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH RING BELOW). Precomposed character encodings for 'R with ring below', 'L with ring below', 'R with ring below and macron', and 'L with ring below and macron' were proposed, because of their use in Sanskrit transliteration and theCSX+ Indic character set.[2] This proposal was rejected, because they are already encoded as combining character sequences.[3]
The ring as a diacritic mark should not be confused with thedot orU+0366 ◌ͦCOMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER O diacritic marks, or with the degree sign °.
The half ring as a diacritic mark should not be confused with thecomma orogonek diacritic marks.
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