Circumflex

This article is about the diacritic used to modify other characters. For use as an independent, spacing character, see Caret.
ˆ
Circumflex
Diacritics in Latin & Greek
accent
acute( ´ )
double acute( ˝ )
grave( ` )
double grave(  ̏ )
breve( ˘ )
inverted breve(  ̑ )
caron, háček( ˇ )
cedilla( ¸ )
circumflex( ˆ )
diaeresis, umlaut( ¨ )
dot( · )
hook, hook above(   ̡   ̢  ̉ )
horn(  ̛ )
iota subscript(  ͅ  )
macron( ¯ )
ogonek, nosinė( ˛ )
perispomene(  ͂  )
ring( ˚, ˳ )
rough breathing( )
smooth breathing( ᾿ )
Marks sometimes used as diacritics
apostrophe( )
bar( ◌̸ )
colon( : )
comma( , )
hyphen( ˗ )
tilde( ~ )
Diacritical marks in other scripts
Arabic diacritics
Early Cyrillic diacritics
kamora(  ҄ )
pokrytie(  ҇ )
titlo(  ҃ )
Gurmukhī diacritics
Hebrew diacritics
Indic diacritics
anusvara( )
chandrabindu( )
nukta( )
virama( )
chandrakkala( )
IPA diacritics
Japanese diacritics
dakuten( )
handakuten( )
Khmer diacritics
Syriac diacritics
Thai diacritics
Related
Dotted circle
Punctuation marks
Logic symbols
 â
Ĉ ĉ
Ê ê
ế
Ĝ ĝ
Ĥ ĥ
Î î
Ĵ ĵ
Ô ô
Ŝ ŝ
Û û
Ŵ ŵ
Ŷ ŷ

The circumflex is a diacritic in the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts that is used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus "bent around"  a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη (perispōménē). The circumflex in the Latin script is chevron-shaped ( ˆ ), while the Greek circumflex may be displayed either like a tilde ( ˜ ) or like an inverted breve (   ̑ ).

In English the circumflex, like other diacritics, is sometimes retained on loanwords that used it in the original language (for example, rôle).

The diacritic is also used in mathematics, where it is typically called a hat or roof or house.

Uses

Phonetic marker

Pitch

The circumflex has its origins in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it marked long vowels that were pronounced with high and then falling pitch. In a similar vein, the circumflex is today used to mark tone contour in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The shape of the circumflex was originally a combination of the acute and grave accents (^), as it marked a syllable contracted from two vowels: an acute-accented vowel and a non-accented vowel (all non-accented syllables in Ancient Greek were once marked with a grave accent). Later a variant similar to the tilde (~) was also used.

νόος contraction

(synaeresis)
ν-´ō`-ς = νō͂ς = νοῦς
nóos n-´ō`-s = nō̂s = noûs

The term "circumflex" is also used to describe similar tonal accents that result from combining two vowels in related languages such as Sanskrit and Latin.

Since Modern Greek has a stress accent instead of a pitch accent, the circumflex has been replaced with an acute accent in the modern monotonic orthography.

Length

The circumflex accent marks a long vowel in the orthography or transliteration of several languages.

Stress

Bilingual sign showing the use of the circumflex in Welsh as an indicator of length and stress: parêd [paˈreːd] "parade", as opposed to pared [ˈparɛd] "partition wall".

The circumflex accent marks the stressed vowel of a word in some languages:

Vowel quality

Other articulatory features

Abbreviation, contraction, and disambiguation

English

In eighteenth-century British English, before the cheap Penny Post and during the time paper was taxed, the combination ough was shortened to ô when the gh was not pronounced, in order to save room in letters: thô for though, thorô for thorough, and brôt for brought.

French

In French, the circumflex generally marks the former presence of a consonant (usually s) that was deleted and is no longer pronounced. (The corresponding Norman French words, and consequently the words derived from them in English, frequently retain the lost consonant.) For example:

Note that in current French, the English spellings, at least in terms of the syllable with the circumflex, could be pronounced the same as the French spellings, owing to the transformative effect of s on the preceding vowel  for example forêt [fɔʁɛ] "forest", as per est [ɛ] "is" (third person singular of être). Conversely, in the homograph est [ɛst] "east", the [s] sound is pronounced.

Some homophones (or near-homophones in some varieties of French) are distinguished by the circumflex, for instance cote [kɔt] "level, mark" and côte [kot] "rib, coast". (See also Use of the circumflex in French.)

In handwritten French, for example in taking notes, an m with a circumflex (m̂) is an informal abbreviation for même "same".

In February 2016, the Académie française decided to remove the circumflex from about 2000 words, a plan that had been outlined since 1990. However, usage of the circumflex would not be considered incorrect.[9]

Italian

In Italian, î is occasionally used in the plural of nouns and adjectives ending with -io [jo] as a crasis mark. Other possible spellings are -ii and obsolete -j or -ij. For example, the plural of vario [ˈvaːrjo] "various" can be spelt vari, varî, varii; the pronunciation will usually stay [ˈvaːri] with only one [i]. The plural forms of principe [ˈprintʃipe] "prince" and of principio [prinˈtʃipjo] "principle, beginning" can be confusing. In pronunciation, they are distinguished by whether the stress is on the first or on the second syllable, but principi would be a correct spelling of both. When necessary to avoid ambiguity, it is advised to write the plural of principio as principî or as principii.

Norwegian

In Norwegian, the circumflex differentiates fôr "lining, fodder" from the preposition for. From a historical point of view, the circumflex also indicates that the word used to be spelled with the letter ð in Old Norse  for example, fôr is derived from fóðr, lêr 'leather' from leðr, and vêr "weather, ram" from veðr (both lêr and vêr only occur in the Nynorsk spelling; in Bokmål these words are spelled lær and vær). Before the ð disappeared, it was replaced by an ordinary d (fodr, vedr).

Mathematics

In mathematics, the circumflex is used to modify variable names; it is usually read "hat", e.g., î is "i hat". The Fourier transform of a function ƒ is often denoted by \hat f.

In the notation of sets, a hat above an element signifies that the element was removed from the set.

In vector notation, a hat above a letter indicates a unit vector (a dimensionless vector with a magnitude of 1). For instance, \hat{\mathbf{\imath}}, \hat{\mathbf{x}}, or \hat{\mathbf{e}}_1 stands for a unit vector in the direction of the x-axis of a Cartesian coordinate system.

In statistics, the hat is used to denote an estimator or an estimated value, as opposed to its theoretical counterpart. For example, in errors and residuals, the hat in \hat\varepsilon indicates an observable estimate (the residual) of an unobservable quantity called \varepsilon (the statistical error). It is read x-hat or x-roof, where x represents the character under the hat.

Music

In music theory and musicology, a circumflex above a numeral is used to make reference to a particular scale degree.

In music notation, a chevron-shaped symbol placed above a note indicates marcato, a special form of emphasis or accent. In music for string instruments, a narrow inverted chevron indicates that a note should be performed up-bow.

Circumflex in digital character sets

The precomposed characters Â/â, Ê/ê, Î/î, Ô/ô, and Û/û (which incorporate the circumflex) are included in the ISO-8859-1 character set, and dozens more are available in Unicode. In addition, Unicode has U+0302 ̂ COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT, which in principle allows adding the diacritic to any base letter.

For historical reasons, there is a similar but larger character, U+005E ^ CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT, which is also included in ASCII but often referred to as caret instead. It is, however, unsuitable for use as a diacritic on modern computer systems, as it is a spacing character. Another spacing circumflex character in Unicode is the smaller U+02C6 ˆ MODIFIER LETTER CIRCUMFLEX, mainly used in phonetic notations  or as a sample of the diacritic in isolation.

See also

References

  1. "Genitivni znak". Pravopis Srpskog Jezika (in Serbian).
  2. 1 2 www.tdk.gov.tr
  3. Lewis, Geoffrey (1999). The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success.
  4. Kornfilt, Jaklin (2013). Turkish.
  5. "Malawi: Maláui, Malaui, Malauí, Malavi ou Malávi?". DicionarioeGramatica.com.br. Retrieved 2015-10-25.
  6. Paul Morrow (March 16, 2011). "The basics of Filipino pronunciation: Part 2 of 3 • accent marks". Pilipino Express. Retrieved July 18, 2012.
  7. Ricardo M.D. Nolasco. Grammar notes on the national language (PDF).
  8. Joan Schoellner & Beverly D. Heinle, ed. (2007). Tagalog Reading Booklet (PDF). Simon & Schister's Pimsleur. p. 56.
  9. "End of the circumflex? Changes in French spelling cause uproar". BBC. 5 February 2016.

External links

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