Circumflex


The circumflex is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from "bent around"a translation of the .
The circumflex in the Latin script is chevron-shaped, while the Greek circumflex may be displayed either like a tilde or like an inverted breve. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin alphabet, precomposed characters are available.
In English, the circumflex, like other diacritics, is sometimes retained on loanwords that used it in the original language.
In mathematics and statistics, the circumflex diacritic is sometimes used to denote a function and is called a hat operator.
A free-standing version of the circumflex symbol,, is encoded in ASCII and Unicode and has become known as caret and has acquired special uses, particularly in computing and mathematics. The original caret, , is used in proofreading to indicate insertion.

Uses

Diacritic on vowels

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. This is also how it is used in Bamanankan.
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. Later a variant similar to the tilde was also used.
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

The circumflex accent marks the stressed vowel of a word in some languages:
  • Portuguese, and are stressed close vowels, opposed to their open counterparts, and .
  • Welsh: the circumflex due to its function as a disambiguating lengthening sign is used in polysyllabic words with word-final long vowels. The circumflex thus indicates the stressed syllable, since in Welsh, non-stressed vowels may not normally be long. This happens notably where the singular ends in an, to, e.g. singular camera, drama, opera, sinema → plural camerâu, dramâu, operâu, sinemâu; however, it also occurs in singular nominal forms, e.g. arwyddocâd; in verbal forms, e.g. deffrônt, cryffânt; etc.

Vowel quality

  • In Breton, it is used on an to show that the letter is pronounced open instead of closed.
  • In Bulgarian, the sound represented in Bulgarian by the Cyrillic letter ъ is usually transliterated as â in systems used prior to 1989. Although called a schwa, it is more accurately described as a mid back unrounded vowel. Unlike English or French, but similar to Romanian and Afrikaans, it can be stressed.
  • In Pinyin romanized Mandarin Chinese, is used to represent the sound in isolation, which occurs sometimes as an exclamation.
  • In French, the letter is usually pronounced in some varieties of French: Swiss French and Quebec French. In the usual pronunciations of central and northern France, ô is pronounced, like eau, eû is pronounced, like eux; in Southern France, no distinction is made between and, and.
  • In Phuthi, and are used to mark superclose vowels and, respectively.
  • Portuguese , , and are stressed high vowels, in opposition to , , and , which are stressed low vowels.
  • In Romanian, the circumflex is used on the vowels and to mark the vowel, similar to Russian yery. The names of these accented letters are â din a and î din i, respectively.
  • In Slovak, the circumflex on an indicates a diphthong.
  • In Swedish dialect and folklore literature the circumflex is used to indicate the phonemes or , or and in dialects and regional accents where these are distinct from , or and respectively, unlike Standard Swedish where and, and are short and long allophones of the phonemes and respectively, and where Old Swedish short has merged with from Old Swedish instead of centralizing to or fronting to and remaining a distinct phoneme as in the dialects in question. Different methods can be found in different literature, so some author may use instead of, or use where others use .
  • Vietnamese , , and are higher vowels than , , and . The circumflex can appear together with a tone mark on the same vowel, as in the word Việt. Vowels with circumflex are considered separate letters from the base vowels.

Nasality

Other articulatory features

  • In Emilian, denote both length and height.
  • In Tagalog, Cebuano and most Philippine languages, the circumflex accent is used to represent the simultaneous occurrence of a stress and a glottal stop on the last vowel of a word. Though not part of the official alphabet, possible combinations can include:,,,, and. But in the case of T'boli, the circumflex accent is only used as a pure unstressed glottal stop. It works as a combination of acute and grave accent; with the case of letters and which represents the sound of and respectively and can be shown as and if it contains a glottal stop.
  • In Romagnol, they are used to represent the diphthongs, whose specific articulation varies between dialects, e.g. sêl "salt".
  • In Old Tupi, the circumflex changed a vowel into a semivowel: , , and .
  • In Rusyn, the letter is sometimes used to transliterate the Cyrillic letter.
  • In Turkish, the circumflex over and is sometimes used in words of Arabic or Persian derivation to indicate when a preceding consonant is to be pronounced as a palatal plosive;, . The circumflex over is used to indicate a nisba suffix.
  • In Pe̍h-ōe-jī romanization of Hokkien, the circumflex over a vowel or a syllabic nasal indicate the tone number 5, traditionally called Yang Level or Light Level. The tone contour is usually low rising. For example, , n̂g.

Visual discrimination between homographs

  • In Serbo-Croatian the circumflex can be used to distinguish homographs, and it is called the "genitive sign" or "length sign". Examples include sam "am" versus sâm "alone". For example, the phrase "I am alone" may be written Ja sam sâm to improve clarity. Another example: da "yes", dâ "gives".
  • Turkish. According to Turkish Language Association orthography, düzeltme işareti "correction mark" over a, i and u marks a long vowel to disambiguate similar words. For example, compare ama "but" and âmâ "blind", şura 'that place, there' and şûra "council". In general, circumflexes occur only in Arabic and Persian loanwords as vowel length in early Turkish was not phonemic. However, this standard was never applied entirely consistently and by the late 20th century many publications had stopped using circumflexes almost entirely.
  • Welsh. The circumflex is known as hirnod "long sign" or acen grom "crooked accent", but more usually and colloquially as to bach "little roof". It lengthens a stressed vowel, and is used particularly to differentiate between homographs; e.g. tan and tân, ffon and ffôn, gem and gêm, cyn and cŷn, or gwn and gŵn. However the circumflex is only required on elongated vowels if the same word exists without the circumflex - "nos", for example, has an elongated "o" sound but a circumflex is not required as the same word with a shortened "o" doesn't exist.
  • The orthography of French has a few pairs of homophones that are only distinguished by the circumflex: e.g. du vs. dû 'due'.

Diacritic on consonants

  • In Pinyin, the romanized writing of Mandarin Chinese, <ẑ>, <ĉ>, and <ŝ> are, albeit rarely, used to represent , , and , respectively.
  • In Esperanto, the circumflex is used on <ĉ>, <ĝ>, <ĥ>, <ĵ>, <ŝ>. Each indicates a different consonant from the unaccented form, and is considered a separate letter for purposes of collation.
  • In Nsenga, <ŵ> denotes the labiodental approximant.
  • In Chichewa, <ŵ> used to denote the voiced bilabial fricative ; nowadays, however, most Chichewa-speakers pronounce it as a regular.
  • In Nias, <ŵ> denotes the semivowel.
  • In the African language Venda, a circumflex below , , , and is used to represent dental consonants: <ḓ>, <ḽ>, <ṋ>, <ṱ>.
  • In the 18th century, the Real Academia Española introduced the circumflex accent in Spanish to mark that a or were pronounced and respectively : châracteres, exâcto. This usage was quickly abandoned during the same century, once the RAE decided to use and with one assigned pronunciation only: and respectively.
  • In Domari, the circumflex is used on the letters <ĉ ĝ ĵ ŝ ẑ> to represent the sounds of. It is also used above vowels to indicate length.

Abbreviation, contraction, and disambiguation

English

In 18th century British English, before the cheap Penny Post and while paper was taxed, the combination ough was occasionally shortened to when the gh was not pronounced, to save space: thô for though, thorô for thorough, and brôt for brought.

French

In French, the circumflex generally marks the former presence of a consonant that was deleted and is no longer pronounced. For example:
  • ancêtre "ancestor"
  • hôpital "hospital"
  • hôtel "hostel"
  • forêt "forest"
  • rôtir "to roast"
  • côte "rib, coast, slope"
  • pâté "paste"
  • août "August"
  • dépôt
Some homophones are distinguished by the circumflex. However,, and distinguish different sounds in most varieties of French, for instance cote "level, mark, code number" and côte "rib, coast, hillside".
In handwritten French, for example in taking notes, an ' with a circumflex is an informal abbreviation for même "same".
In February 2016, the Académie Française decided to remove the circumflex from about 2,000 words, a plan that had been outlined since 1990. However, usage of the circumflex would not be considered incorrect.

Italian

In Italian, is occasionally used in the plural of nouns and adjectives ending with -io as a crasis mark. Other possible spellings are -ii and obsolete -j or -ij. For example, the plural of vario "various" can be spelt vari, varî, varii; the pronunciation will usually stay with only one. The plural forms of principe "prince" and of principio "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.

Latin

In Neo-Latin, circumflex was used most often to disambiguate between forms of the same word that used a long vowel, for example ablative of first declension and genitive of fourth declension, or between second and third conjugation verbs. It was also used for the interjection.

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 in Old Norsefor example, fôr is derived from fóðr, lêr 'leather' from leðr, and vêr "weather, ram" from veðr. After the disappeared, it was replaced by a .

Portuguese

Circumflexes are used in many common words of the language, such as the name of the language, português. Usually,, and appear before nasals in proparoxytone words, like higiênico but in many cases in European Portuguese and will be marked with an acute accent since the vowel quality is open in this standard variety. In early literacy classes in school, it is commonly nicknamed chapéu.

Welsh

The circumflex is mostly used to mark long vowels, so are always long. However, not all long vowels are marked with a circumflex, so the letters with no circumflex do not necessarily represent short vowels.

Mathematics

In mathematics, the circumflex is used to modify variable names; it is usually read "hat", e.g., is "x hat". The Fourier transform of a function ƒ is often denoted by.
In geometry, a hat is sometimes used for an angle. For instance, the angles or.
In vector notation, a hat above a letter indicates a unit vector. For instance,,, or 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 indicates an observable estimate of an unobservable quantity called . It is read x-hat or x-roof, where x represents the character under the hat.
In Quantum Mechanics, the hat is sometimes used to mark a quantum observable; the observable is the self-adjoint operator implying a measurement whose moment is when the prevailing quantum state is.

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 below

A circumflex below a vowelfor example, is a notation used by the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet to indicate a raised variant of the vowel.
The Venda language has four letters with circumflex below ,, and to indicate a dental consonant.

Unicode digital character sets">

Unicode encodes a number of cases of "letter with circumflex" as precomposed characters and these are displayed below. In addition, many more symbols may be composed using the combining character facility that may be used with any letter or other diacritic to create a customised symbol but this does not mean that the result has any real-world application and thus are not shown in the table.
The Greek diacritic, is encoded as. In distinction to the angled Latin circumflex, the Greek circumflex is printed in the form of either a tilde or an inverted breve.

Freestanding circumflex

There is a similar but larger character,, which was originally intended to emulate the typewriter's dead key function using backspace and overtype. Nowadays, this grapheme is more often called a caret instead. It is, however, unsuitable for use as a diacritic on modern computer systems, as it is a spacing character. Two other spacing circumflex characters in Unicode are the smaller modifier letters and, mainly used in phonetic notations or as a sample of the diacritic in isolation.

Typing the circumflex accent

In countries where the local language routinely include letters with a circumflex, local keyboards are typically engraved with those symbols.
For users with other keyboards, see QWERTY#Multilingual variants and Unicode input.