Breve
A breve is a diacritical mark ˘ like a little round cup, in Romanian possible above the a (the ə schwa vowel) and in Esperanto possible above the u. It is also widely used in pronunciation keys to indicate that a vowel has a short sound. It looks similar to caron (háček), but caron has a sharp tip, while breve is rounded.
The HTML/Unicode numbers for breve letters are:
| Description | Upper Case | Lower Case
|
|---|
| Letter | HTML | Letter | HTML
|
|---|
| A-breve | Ă | Ă | ă | ă
|
|---|
| E-breve | Ĕ | Ĕ | ĕ | ĕ
|
|---|
| I-breve | Ĭ | Ĭ | ĭ | ĭ
|
|---|
| O-breve | Ŏ | Ŏ | ŏ | ŏ
|
|---|
| U-breve | Ŭ | Ŭ | ŭ | ŭ
|
|---|
| G-breve | Ğ | Ğ | ğ | ğ
|
|---|
|
| | Ắ | Ắ | ắ | ắ
|
|---|
| | Ằ | Ằ | ằ | ằ
|
|---|
| | Ẳ | Ẳ | ẳ | ẳ
|
|---|
| | Ẵ | Ẵ | ẵ | ẵ
|
|---|
| | Ặ | Ặ | ặ | ặ
|
|---|
The last rows are the letter A/a with breve and acute, grave, hook, tilde, and dot, respectively. These are mainly used in the Vietnamese language.
In Cyrillic alphabet, breve is used for "short I": "Й". Also, in Belarusian language, "short U": "Ў" exists, pronounced like the "u" part in diphthongs in "now", "low".
A breve is also a note in music, lasting twice as long as a semibreve (or whole note). Because it lasts longer than a bar in most modern time signatures, it is now rarely encountered, but in Mediaeval music it was the shortest note length, and could be either a half or a third as long as the longa.
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