- Ring (diacritic)
A ring
diacritic may appear above or below letters. It may be combined with some letters of the extendedLatin alphabet s in various contexts.Ring above
The Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Walloon character
Å (å) is typically seen as anA 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 theCzech language (where the ring is known as a kroužek), together withháček andčárka (like anacute accent ) 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 [IPA|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 almost 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 /IPA|ɑ/ (å) from /IPA|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 УUnicode|̊ / уUnicode|̊, used to represent the IPA|/wɔ/ 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 Unicode|у̊ (Cyrillic у with ring above) or even Unicode|ń̊ (n with acute and ring above). The standalone ring above symbol has the codepoint U+02DA.Ring below
Unicode encodes "combining ring below" at U+0325 ( IPA|̥ ). The diacritic is used in IPA to indicate voicelessness, and inIndo-European studies to indicate syllabicity (PIE|r̥ corresponding to IPA IPA| [ɹ̩] ).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: Unicode|a͑ and Unicode|a͗. These may or may not display correctly in youruser 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 Unicode|
ͦ ), or with the degree sign °. Additionally this symbol Å is the properångström sign.External links
* [http://diacritics.typo.cz Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents]
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