Ê, 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, Persian, and Ukrainian.
Usage in various languages[edit]
Afrikaans[edit]
Ê is not considered a separate letter in Afrikaans but a variation of "e". The circumflex changes the pronunciation of "e" to be /ɛː/ (or /æː/ if the succeeding consonant is either a dorsal or a liquid)
Chinese[edit]
In the Pinyin romanization of Standard Mandarin Chinese, ê represents /ɛ/. It corresponds to Zhuyin ㄝ. The circumflex occurs only if ê is the only letter in the syllable: ề /ɛ̂/ (诶; 誒; "eh!"). Without the circumflex, e as, the only letter in the syllable, represents /ɤ/: è /ɤ̂/ (饿; 餓; "hungry"). Elsewhere, /ɛ/ is written as a (before n) or e (at the end of a syllable), with the appropriate tone mark,: xiān /ɕi̯ɛ́n/ (先; "first"), xuǎn /ɕy̯ɛ̀n/ (选; 選; "to choose"), xué /ɕy̯ɛ̌ ~ ɕy̯ě/ (学; 學; "to learn"), xièxie /ɕi̯ɛ̂.ɕi̯ɛ ~ ɕi̯ê.ɕi̯e/ (谢谢; 謝謝; "thanks").
In Pe̍h-ōe-jī, ê is the fifth tone of e: ê (的; possessive, adjectival suffix).
French[edit]
Diacritics are not considered to be distinct letters of the French alphabet. In French, ê changes the pronunciation of e from /ə/ to /ɛ/. It is used instead of "è" for words that used to be written "es".
Friulian[edit]
Ê represents /eː/ and /ɛː/.
Italian[edit]
Ê occasionally used to represent /eː/ or /ɛː/ in words like fêro (they did).[citation needed]
Kurdish[edit]
Ê is the 7th letter of the Kurdish Kurmanji alphabet and represents /eː/.
Persian[edit]
Ê is used in the Persian Latin (Rumi) alphabet, equivalent to ع.
Portuguese[edit]
In Portuguese, ê marks a stressed /e/ only in words whose stressed syllable is in an otherwise unpredictable location in the word: "pêssego" (peach). The letter, pronounced /e/, can also contrast with é, pronounced /ɛ/, as in pé (foot).
Tibetan[edit]
Ê is used in Tibetan pinyin to represent /e/, for example Gêrzê County.
Ukrainian[edit]
Ê is used in the ISO 9:1995 system of Ukrainian transliteration as the letter Є.
Vietnamese[edit]
Ê is the 9th letter of the Vietnamese alphabet and represents /e/. 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[edit]
In Welsh, ê represents long stressed e [eː] if the vowel would otherwise be pronounced as short [ɛ]: llên [ɬeːn] "literature", as opposed to llen [ɬɛn] "curtain", or gêm [ɡeːm] "game", as opposed to gem [ɡɛm] "gem, jewel". That is useful for borrowed words with a final stress like apêl [apˈeːl] "appeal".
Other[edit]
In Popido, a fictitious dialect of Esperanto made by Manuel Halvelik for use in literature, ê represents /ə/. It is only used epenthetically to break consonant clusters, especially before grammatical suffixes.
Character mappings[edit]
Unicode encoded 5 pairs of precomposed characters (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 represented by combining diacritical marks, like ê̄ (ê̄) and ê̌ (ê̌).
Preview | Ê | ê | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH CIRCUMFLEX | LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH CIRCUMFLEX | ||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 202 | U+00CA | 234 | U+00EA |
UTF-8 | 195 138 | C3 8A | 195 170 | C3 AA |
Numeric character reference | Ê |
Ê |
ê |
ê |
Named character reference | Ê | ê | ||
EBCDIC family | 114 | 72 | 82 | 52 |
ISO 8859-1/3/9/14/15/16 | 202 | CA | 234 | EA |