Ê

Template:Short description Template:Infobox graphemeÊ, ê (e-circumflex) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, found in Afrikaans, French, Friulian, Kurdish, Norwegian (Nynorsk), Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Welsh. It is used to transliterate Chinese and Ukrainian.

Usage in various languages

Afrikaans

Ê is not considered a separate letter in Afrikaans but a variation of "E". The circumflex changes the pronunciation of "e" to be (or if the succeeding consonant is either a dorsal or a liquid)

Chinese

In the Pinyin romanization of Standard Mandarin Chinese, ê represents . It corresponds to Zhuyin ㄝ. The circumflex occurs only if ê is the only vowel in a syllable: ề (Template:Zh; "eh!"). Without the circumflex, e as the only vowel represents : è (Template:Zh; "hungry"). Elsewhere, is written as a (after i or ü before n) or e (before or after another vowel), with the appropriate tone mark,: xiān (Template:Zh; "first"), xuǎn (Template:Zh; "to choose", noting that ü is written u after x), xué (Template:Zh; "to learn"), xièxie (Template:Zh; "thanks").

In Pe̍h-ōe-jī, ê is the fifth tone of e: ê (Template:Zh; possessive, adjectival suffix).

French

Diacritics are not considered to be distinct letters of the French alphabet. In French, ê usually changes the pronunciation of e from /ə/ to /ɛ/. It is used instead of "è" for words that used to be written with e + another letter (usually an s).

Friulian

Ê represents and .

Khmer

Ê is used in UNGEGN romanization system for Khmer to represent and Template:IPAslink, for example Khmêr ( ) and Dângrêk Mountains ( ).

Kurdish

Ê is the 7th letter of the Kurdish Kurmanji alphabet and represents /eː/.

Norwegian Nynorsk

In Nynorsk, ê is used to represent the reduction of the Old Norse sequence Template:Angbr, similar to the use of ê for the historical sequence Template:Angbr in French. It is mostly used to differentiate words which otherwise would be spelled the same, e.g. vêr 'weather' and ver, imperative of 'to be'.

Portuguese

In Portuguese, ê marks a stressed Template:IPAslink only in words whose stressed syllable is in an otherwise unpredictable location in the word: "pêssego" (peach). The letter, pronounced Template:IPAslink, can also contrast with é, pronounced Template:IPAslink, as in pé (foot).

In Brazilian Portuguese, ê also used on final syllable of the root word e.g. ("Guinea-Bissau").

Tibetan

Ê is used in Tibetan pinyin to represent , for example Gêrzê County.

Ukrainian

Ê is used in the ISO 9:1995 system of Ukrainian transliteration as the letter Є.

Vietnamese

Ê is the 9th letter of the Vietnamese alphabet and represents . In Vietnamese phonology, diacritics can be added to form five forms to represent five tones of ê:

• Ề ề
• Ể ể
• Ễ ễ
• Ế ế
• Ệ ệ

Welsh

In Welsh, ê represents long stressed e if the vowel would otherwise be pronounced as short : llên "literature", as opposed to llen "curtain", or gêm "game", as opposed to gem "gem, jewel". That is useful for borrowed words with a final stress like apêl "appeal".

Other

In Popido, a fictitious dialect of Esperanto made by Manuel Halvelik for use in literature, ê represents . It is only used epenthetically to break consonant clusters, especially before grammatical suffixes.

Character mappings

• Template:Unichar
• Template:Unichar

Unicode also encodes five pairs of precomposed characters with compounded diacritis (Ề / ề, Ể / ể, Ễ / ễ, Ế / ế, Ệ / ệ) for the five tones of ê in Vietnamese. Two pairs of the five (Ế / ế and Ề / ề) can also be used as the second and fourth tones of ê in Pinyin. The first and third tones of ê in Pinyin have to be written using combining diacritical marks.Template:Efn

See also

• Circumflex