Ê


Ê, ê is a letter of the Latin alphabet, found in Afrikaans, French, Friulian, Kurdish, Norwegian (Nynorsk), Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Welsh. It is used to transliterate Chinese and Ukrainian.

Usage in various languages

Afrikaans

Ê is not considered a separate letter in Afrikaans but a variation of "E". The circumflex changes the pronunciation of "e" to be

Chinese

In the Pinyin romanization of Standard Mandarin Chinese, ê represents. It corresponds to Zhuyin ㄝ. The circumflex occurs only if ê is the only vowel in a syllable: ề . Without the circumflex, e as the only vowel represents : è . Elsewhere, is written as a or e, with the appropriate tone mark,: xiān , xuǎn , xué , xièxie .
In Pe̍h-ōe-jī, ê is the fifth tone of e: ê.

French

Diacritics are not considered to be distinct letters of the French alphabet. In French, ê usually changes the pronunciation of e from /ə/ to /ɛ/. It is used instead of "è" for words that used to be written with e + another letter.

Friulian

Ê represents and.

Khmer

Ê is used in UNGEGN romanization system for Khmer to represent and, for example Khmêr and Dângrêk Mountains.

Kurdish

Ê is the 7th letter of the Kurdish Kurmanji alphabet and represents /eː/.

Norwegian Nynorsk

In Nynorsk, ê is used to represent the reduction of the Old Norse sequence, similar to the use of ê for the historical sequence in French. It is mostly used to differentiate words which otherwise would be spelled the same, e.g. vêr 'weather' and ver, imperative of 'to be'.

Portuguese

In Portuguese, ê marks a stressed only in words whose stressed syllable is in an otherwise unpredictable location in the word: "pêssego". The letter, pronounced, can also contrast with é, pronounced, as in pé.
In Brazilian Portuguese, ê also used on final syllable of the root word e.g. Guinê-Bissau.

Tibetan

Ê is used in Tibetan pinyin to represent, for example Gêrzê County.

Ukrainian

Ê is used in the ISO 9:1995 system of Ukrainian transliteration as the letter Є.

Vietnamese

Ê is the 9th letter of the Vietnamese alphabet and represents. In Vietnamese phonology, diacritics can be added to form five forms to represent five tones of ê:
  • Ề ề
  • Ể ể
  • Ễ ễ
  • Ế ế
  • Ệ ệ

Welsh

In Welsh, ê represents long stressed e if the vowel would otherwise be pronounced as short : llên "literature", as opposed to llen "curtain", or gêm "game", as opposed to gem "gem, jewel". That is useful for borrowed words with a final stress like apêl "appeal".

Other

In Popido, a fictitious dialect of Esperanto made by Manuel Halvelik for use in literature, ê represents. It is only used epenthetically to break consonant clusters, especially before grammatical suffixes.

Character mappings

Unicode also encodes five pairs of precomposed characters with compounded diacritis for the five tones of ê in Vietnamese. Two pairs of the five can also be used as the second and fourth tones of ê in Pinyin. The first and third tones of ê in Pinyin have to be written using combining diacritical marks.