Ring (diacritic)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Å | å |
| Ů | ů |
| Y̊ | ẙ |
| W̊ | ẘ |
| Diacritical marks |
|---|
|
accent
breve ( ˘ )
hook / dấu hỏi ( ̉ ) |
| Marks sometimes used as diacritics |
|
apostrophe ( ’ ) |
A ring diacritic may appear above (◌̊) or below (◌̥) letters. It may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in various contexts.
Contents |
[edit] Ring above
The Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Walloon character Å (å) is typically seen as an A with a ring above. However, in the languages in which it is used, the letter is seen as a unique symbol, rather than an A with a diacritic.
Other characters with a ring diacritic are Ů and ů (a Latin U with ring above). These characters are used in the Czech language (where the ring is known as a kroužek), together with háček and čárka above many other letters. This vowel "ů" shows how the pronunciation of various words evolved during the centuries. For example, the word "kůň" (a horse; pronounced [ku:ɲ]) used to be written "kóň", which evolved, along with pronunciation, into "kuoň". Ultimately, the vowel [o] disappeared completely, and it is only kept as the ring above "u". The letters ů and ú have the pronunciation (long [u:]). For historical reasons, ů can never be the first letter of the word; unlike ú is always the first letter of the word or the word root.
The ring is also used in Bolognese (a dialect of Emiliano-Romagnolo language) to distinguish the sound /ɑ/ (å) from /a/ (a).
Ring above has been used in Lithuanian cyrillic alphabet promoted by Russian authorities at the last quarter of 19th century in the letter У̊/у̊, used to represent the /u̯ɔ/ diphthong (now written uo in contemporary Lithuanian orthography).
Many more characters can be created in Unicode using the 'combining ring above' U+030A, including the above mentioned у̊ (cyrillic у with ring above) or even ń̊ (n with acute and ring above). The standalone ring above symbol has the codepoint U+02DA.
[edit] Ring below
Unicode encodes "combining ring below" at U+0325 ( ̥ ). The diacritic is used in IPA to indicate voicelessness, and in Indo-European studies to indicate syllabicity (r̥ corresponding to IPA [ɹ̩]).
| 1E00 | Ḁ | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING BELOW |
| 1E01 | ḁ | LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH RING BELOW |
[edit] Half rings
Half rings also exist as diacritic marks, these are characters U+0351 (combining left half ring above) and U+0357 (combining left half ring below). These characters may be used with the International Phonetic Alphabet. They are here given with the lowercase a: a͑ and a͗. These may or may not display correctly in your user agent.
Other, similar signs are in use in Armenian: the 'left half ring above' U+0559 ( ՙ ), and the Armenian comma or 'right half ring above' U+055A ( ՚ ).
The ring as a diacritic mark should not be confused with the dot above or comma above diacritic marks, with the combing o above (U+0366 ͦ), or with the degree sign °. Additionally this symbol Å (U+00C5) is the proper angstrom sign, though Unicode includes an angstrom sign symbol Å for use with in converting legacy applications in old code pages in certain East Asian languages which looks similar to Å.
[edit] External link
| The ISO basic Latin alphabet | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp | Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz | |
| history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
