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.
  • In Afrikaans, the circumflex marks a vowel with a lengthened pronunciation, often arising from compensatory lengthening due to the loss of from the original Dutch form. Examples of circumflex use in Afrikaans are sê "to say", wêreld "world", môre "tomorrow", brûe "bridges".
  • In the transliteration of Akkadian, the circumflex indicates a long vowel resulting from an aleph contraction.
  • In western Cree, Sauk, and Saulteaux, the Algonquianist Standard Roman Orthography indicates long vowels either with a circumflex ⟨â ê î ô⟩ or with a macron ⟨ā ē ī ō⟩.
  • The PDA orthography for Domari uses circumflex-bearing vowels for length.
  • In Emilian,, are used to represent
  • French: In some varieties such as in Northern French, Belgian French, Swiss French and Quebec French vowels with a circumflex are usually long: fête is longer than faite. This length compensates for a deleted consonant, usually. French words with deleted include châtain and hôpital.
  • Standard Friulian.
  • Japanese: In the Nihon-shiki system of romanization, the circumflex is used to indicate long vowels which were inherited from the Portuguese alphabet. The Kunrei-shiki system which is based on Nihon-shiki system also uses the circumflex. The Traditional and Modified forms of the Hepburn system use the macron for this purpose, though some users may use the circumflex as a substitute if there are difficulties inputting the macron, as the two diacritics are visually fairly similar.
  • Jèrriais.
  • In UNGEGN romanization system for Khmer: is used to represent, in first series and in second series, and for. There are also additional vowels which are diphthongs such as , , , and .
  • In Kurmanji Kurdish, are used to represent.
  • In Mikasuki, circumflexed vowels indicate a rising and falling pitch or tone.
  • In Adûnaic, Black Speech and Khuzdul constructed languages of J. R. R. Tolkien all long vowels are transcribed with the circumflex. In Sindarin another of Tolkien's languages long vowels in polysyllabic words take the acute but a circumflex in monosyllables used to mark a non-phonemic extra lengthening.

    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

  • In Luxembourgish can be used to indicate nasalisation of a vowel. Also, the circumflex can be over the vowel to indicate nasalisation. In either case, the circumflex is rare.
  • In several indigenous languages of New Caledonia, a circumflex indicates nasality on vowels: e.g. the orthography Xârâcùù contrasts its oral vowels , , , with its nasal vowels , , , , with duplicated variants indicating length.

    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'.