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A caron ( ) or háček ( , plural háčeks or háčky), is a diacritic mark () placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages, to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation. Typographers tend to use the term caron, while linguists prefer the Czech word háček.
The symbol is common in the Baltic languages, Slavic languages, Finnic languages, Sami languages and Berber languages language families. Its use differs according to the orthographic rules of a language. In most Slavic and other European languages it indicates present or historical palatalization ( e → ě; → ), iotation, or postalveolar articulation ( c → č; → ). In Salishan languages, it often represents a uvular consonant ( x → x̌; → ). When placed over vowel symbols, the caron can indicate a contour tone, for instance the falling and then rising tone in the Pinyin romanization of Standard Chinese Chinese. It is also used to decorate symbols in mathematics, where it is often pronounced ("check").
The caron is shaped approximately like a small letter "v". For serif typefaces, the caron generally has one of two forms: either symmetrical, essentially identical to an inverted circumflex; or with the left stroke thicker than the right, like the usual serif form of the letter "v" (, but without serifs). The latter form is often preferred by Czech designers for use in Czech language, while for other uses the symmetrical form tends to predominate,Gaultney, Victor. " Problems of diacritic design for Latin text faces. " Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Master of Arts in Typeface Design, University of Reading, 2002, pp. 16–18. as it does also among sans-serif typefaces.
The caron is not to be confused with the breve (, which is curved rather than angled):
| +Breve vs. caron !Breve | Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ğ ğ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ Y̆ y̆ |
The term caron is used in the official names of Unicode characters (e.g., ""). The Unicode Consortium explicitly states that the reason for this is unknown, but its earliest known use was in the United States Government Printing Office Style Manual of 1967, and it was later used in character sets such as DIN 31624 (1979), ISO 5426 (1980), ISO/IEC 6937 (1983) and ISO/IEC 8859-2 (1985). Its actual origin remains obscure, but some have suggested that it may derive from a fusion of caret and macron. Though this may be false etymology, it is plausible, particularly in the absence of other suggestions. A Unicode technical note states that the name "hacek" should have been used instead.
The Oxford English Dictionary gives 1953 as the earliest appearance in English for háček. In Czech language, háček () means 'small ', the diminutive form of hák (, 'hook')". The name appears in most English dictionaries, but they treat the long mark (acute accent) differently. British dictionaries, such as the OED, ODE, CED, write háček (with the mark) in the headwords, háček at Oxford English Dictionary while American ones, such as the Merriam-Webster, NOAD, AHD
haček at Merriam Webster, however, the NOAD gives háček as an alternative spelling.
In Slovak language it is called mäkčeň (, i.e., 'softener' or 'palatalization mark'), in Croatian kvaka or kvačica ('angled hook' or 'small angled hook'), in Serbian language ква̏ка or ква̏чица ('angled hook' or 'small angled hook'), in Slovene language strešica ('little roof') or kljukica ('little hook'), in Lithuanian paukščiukas ('little bird') or varnelė ('little jackdaw'), in Estonian katus ('roof'), in Finnish language hattu ('hat'), and in Lakota language ičášleče ('wedge').
In Italian language, š, ž, and č are routinely used as in Slovenian to transcribe Slavic languages names in the Cyrillic script since in native Italian words, the sounds represented by these letters must be followed by a vowel, and Italian uses ch for , not . Other Romance languages, by contrast, tend to use their own orthographies, or in a few cases such as Spanish, borrow English sh or zh.
The caron is also used in the Romani alphabets. The Faggin-Nazzi writing system for Friulian makes use of the caron over the letters c, g, and s.
The caron is also often used as a diacritical mark on consonants for romanization of text from non-Latin writing systems, particularly in the scientific transliteration of Slavic languages. Philologists and the standard Finnish orthography often prefer using it to express sounds for which English require a digraph ( sh, ch, and zh) because most Slavic languages use only one character to spell the sounds (the key exceptions are Polish sz and cz). Its use for that purpose can even be found in the United States because certain use it in romanization of foreign toponymy. On the typographical side, Š/š and Ž/ž are likely the easiest among non-Western European diacritic characters to adopt for Westerners because the two are part of the Windows-1252 character encoding.
Esperanto uses the circumflex over c, g, h, j, and s in similar ways; the circumflex was chosen because there was no caron on most Western European , but the circumflex existed on French language ones.
It is also used as an accent mark on vowels to indicate the tone of a syllable. The main example is in Pinyin for Chinese language in which it represents a falling-rising tone. It is used in transliterations of Thai language to indicate a rising tone.
The caron below represents voicing.
In Laz language orthography, the lower-case k with caron sometimes has its caron reduced to a stroke while the lower-case t with caron preserves its caron shape. Lazuri Font / Lazca Font, Lazca yazı karakterleri, Lazuri.com
Although the stroke looks similar to an apostrophe, the kerning is significantly different. Using an apostrophe in place of a caron can be perceived as very unprofessional, but it is still often found on imported goods meant for sale in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (compare t’ to ť, L’ahko to Ľahko). (Apostrophes appearing as palatalization marks in some Finnic languages, such as Võro and Karelian, are not forms of caron either.) Foreigners also sometimes mistake the caron for the acute accent (compare Ĺ to Ľ, ĺ to ľ).
In Lower Sorbian and Upper Sorbian, the following letters and digraphs have the caron:
Balto-Slavic, Croatian, Serbian language, Slovene language, Latvian language and Lithuanian use č, š and ž. The digraph dž is also used in these languages but is considered a separate letter only in Croatian and Serbian. The Belarusian Lacinka alphabet also contains the digraph dž (as a separate letter), and Latin transcriptions of Bulgarian and Macedonian may use them at times, for transcription of the letter-combination ДЖ (Bulgarian) and the letter Џ (Macedonian).
In Estonian, Finnish and Karelian these are not palatalized but postalveolar consonants. For example, Estonian Nissi (palatalized) is distinct from nišši (postalveolar). Palatalization is typically ignored in spelling, but some Karelian and Võro orthographies use an apostrophe (') or an acute accent (´). In Finnish and Estonian, š and ž (and in Estonian, very rarely č) appear in loanwords and foreign Noun only and when not available, they can be substituted with 'h': 'sh' for 'š', in print.
In the orthographies of the Sami languages, the letters Č/č, Š/š and Ž/ž appear in Northern Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami. Skolt Sami also uses three other consonants with the caron: Ǯ/ǯ (ezh-caron) to mark the voiced postalveolar affricate (plain Ʒ/ʒ marks the alveolar affricate ), Ǧ/ǧ to mark the voiced palatal affricate and Ǩ/ǩ the corresponding voiceless palatal affricate . More often than not, they are geminated: vuäǯǯad "to get". The orthographies of the more southern Sami languages of Sweden and Norway such as Lule Sami do not use caron, and prefer instead the digraphs tj and sj.
Finnish Kalo uses Ȟ/ȟ.
Lakota language uses Č/č, Š/š, Ž/ž, Ǧ/ǧ (voiced post-velar fricative) and Ȟ/ȟ (plain post-velar fricative).
Indonesian uses ě (e with caron) informally to mark the schwa ().
Many alphabets of African languages use the caron to mark the rising tone, as in the African reference alphabet.
Outside of the Latin alphabet, the caron is also used for Cypriot Greek letters that have a different sound from Standard Modern Greek: σ̌ κ̌ π̌ τ̌ ζ̌ in words like τζ̌αι ('and'), κάτ̌τ̌ος ('cat').
Romanization of Pashto language uses Č/č, Š/š, Ž/ž, X̌/x̌, to represent the letters چ, ش, ژ, ښ, respectively. Additionally, Ṣ̌/ṣ̌ and Ẓ̌/ẓ̌ are used by the southern Pashto dialect only (replaced by X̌/x̌ and Ǵ/ǵ in the north).
The latter Š/š is also used to transcribe the phoneme in Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform, and the phoneme in Semitic languages represented by the letter shin (Phoenician and its descendants).
The caron is also used in Standard Chinese pinyin romanization and orthographies of several other to indicate the "falling-rising" tone (similar to the pitch made when asking "Huh?"). The caron can be placed over the vowels: ǎ, ě, ǐ, ǒ, ǔ, ǚ. The alternative to a caron is a number 3 after the syllable: hǎo = hao3, as the "falling-rising" tone is the third tone in Mandarin Chinese.
The caron is used in the New Transliteration System of D'ni in the symbol š to represent the sound (English "sh").
A-caron (ǎ) is also used to transliterate the Cyrillic script letter Ъ (er golyam) in Bulgarian—it represents the mid back unrounded vowel .
Caron marks a falling and rising tone (bǔ, bǐ) in Fon language languages.
There are a number of Cyrillic letters with caron but they do not have precomposed characters and thus must be generated using the combining character method. These are: В̌в̌; Ǯǯ; Г̌г̌; Ғ̌ғ̌; Д̌д̌; З̌з̌; Р̌р̌; Т̌т̌; Х̌х̌
The characters Č, č, Ě, ě, Š, š, Ž, ž are a part of the Unicode Latin Extended-A set because they occur in Czech and other official languages in Europe, while the rest are in Latin Extended-B, which often causes an inconsistent appearance.
Unicode also encodes , for example: p̬.
A combining double caron was proposed for inclusion in April, 2024.
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