Ring (diacritic)

A ring diacritic may appear above or below letters. It may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in various contexts.

˚
Ring
Diacritics in Latin & Greek accent acute´ double acute˝ grave` double grave ̏ circumflexˆ caron, háčekˇ breve˘ inverted breve  ̑   cedilla¸ diaeresis, umlaut¨ dot· palatal hook  ̡ retroflex hook  ̢ hook above, dấu hỏi ̉ horn ̛ iota subscript ͅ  macronˉ ogonek, nosinė˛ perispomene ͂  overring˚ underring˳ rough breathing῾ smooth breathing᾿ Marks sometimes used as diacritics apostrophe’ bar◌̸ colon: comma, full stop/period. hyphen˗ prime′ tilde~ Diacritical marks in other scripts Arabic diacritics Early Cyrillic diacritics kamora ҄ pokrytie ҇ titlo ҃ Gurmukhī diacritics Hebrew diacritics Indic diacritics anusvaraं ং ം chandrabinduँ ఁ nukta़ virama् ് ్ ් ್ visargaः ঃ IPA diacritics Japanese diacritics dakuten ﾞ handakuten ﾟ Khmer diacritics Syriac diacritics Thai diacritics Related Dotted circle◌ Punctuation marks Logic symbols

Å	å
Ǻ	ǻ
Å̂	å̂
Å̃	å̃
Å̄	å̄
Å̆	å̆
Ā̊	ā̊
Ą̊	ą̊
Å̱	å̱
Ḁ	ḁ
Ḁ̂	ḁ̂
D̊	d̊
E̊	e̊
E̊̄	e̊̄
G̊	g̊
I̊	i̊
J̊	j̊
L̥	l̥
L̥̄	l̥̄
O̊	o̊
Ō̊	ō̊
Q̊	q̊
R̥	r̥
R̥̄	r̥̄
S̊	s̊
S̥	s̥
Ů	ů
Ů́	ů́
Ů̃	ů̃
Ũ̊	ũ̊
Ū̊	ū̊
V̊	v̊
W̊	ẘ
X̊	x̊
Y̊	ẙ

The ring diacritic (˚) redirects here. It is not to be confused with the superscript lower-case o (^o), the ordinal indicator (º), or the degree symbol (°).

Distinct letter

The character Å (å) is derived from an A with a ring. It is a distinct letter in the Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Walloon alphabets. For example the 29 letter Swedish alphabet begins with the basic 26 Latin letters and ends with these three letters, 'Å', 'Ä', and 'Ö'.

Overring

The character Ů (ů; a Latin U with overring, or kroužek in Czech Republic) is a grapheme in the Czech language preserved for historic reasons, which identifies a vowel shift. For example, the word for "horse" used to be written kóň, which evolved, along with pronunciation, into kuoň. Ultimately, the vowel [o] disappeared completely, and the uo evolved into ů, modern form kůň. The letter ů now has the same pronunciation as the letter ú (long [uː]), but changes to a short o when a word is morphed (e.g. nom. kůň → gen. koně, nom. dům → gen. domu), thus showing the historical evolution of the language. Ů cannot occur in initial position. However, ú occurs almost exclusively in initial position or at the beginning of a word root in a compound. These characters are used also in Steuer's Silesian alphabet. The [uo] pronunciation has prevailed in some Moravian dialects, as well as in the Slovak language, which uses the letter ô instead of ů.

The ring is used in some dialects of Emilian-Romagnol to distinguish the sound /ʌ/ (å) from /a/ (a).

ů has been used in Old Lithuanian in Lithuania Minor from the 16th till the beginning of the 20th century and for a shorter time in 16th-century Lithuania Major for diphthong [uo].

The ring has been used in the Lithuanian Cyrillic alphabet promoted by Russian authorities in the last quarter of the 19th century with the letter У̊ / у̊ used to represent the /wɔ/ diphthong (now written uo in Lithuanian orthography).

ẘ and ẙ are used in the ISO 233 romanization of the Arabic alphabet. A fatḥah followed by the letter ⟨ﻭ⟩ (wāw) with a sukūn (ـَوْ‎) is romanized as aẘ. A fatḥah followed by the letter ⟨ﻱ⟩ (yā’) with a sukūn over it (ـَيْ‎) is romanized as aẙ.

Ring upon e (e̊) is used by certain dialectologists of the Walloon language (especially Jean-Jacques Gaziaux) to note the /ə/ vowel typically replacing /i/ and /y/ in the Brabant province central Walloon dialects. The difficulty of type-writing it has led some writers to prefer ë for the same sound.

Many more characters can be created in Unicode using the combining character U+030A ◌̊ COMBINING RING ABOVE, including the above-mentioned у̊ (Cyrillic у with overring) or ń̊ (n with acute and overring).

The standalone (spacing) symbol is U+02DA ˚ RING ABOVE. The unrelated, but nearly identical degree symbol is U+00B0 ° DEGREE SIGN.

Although similar in appearance, it is not to be confused with the Japanese handakuten (U+309C ゜ KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK), a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should instead be pronounced with [p].

Unicode has:

• U+030A ◌̊ COMBINING RING ABOVE
• U+00C5 Å LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE
• U+00E5 å LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE
• U+016E Ů LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH RING ABOVE
• U+016F ů LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH RING ABOVE
• U+1E98 ẘ LATIN SMALL LETTER W WITH RING ABOVE
• U+1E99 ẙ LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH RING ABOVE
• U+212B Å ANGSTROM SIGN

Underring

Unicode encodes the underring at U+0325 ◌̥ COMBINING RING BELOW

The underring is used in IPA to indicate voicelessness, and in Indo-European studies or in Sanskrit transliteration (IAST) to indicate syllabicity of r, l, m, n etc. (e.g. r̥ corresponding to IPA [ɹ̩]). R with ring below, L with ring below, R with ring below and macron, and L with ring below and macron were actually proposed for Unicode because of their use in Sanskrit transliteration and the CSX+ Indic character set.[1] However, the proposal was rejected, because they are already encoded as sequences.[2]

In Pashto romanization, ḁ is used to represent /ə/.[3]

Examples:

• U+1E00 Ḁ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING BELOW
• U+1E01 ḁ LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH RING BELOW

Emilian-Romagnol

In Romagnol, e̥ is used to represent /ə/ in diphthongs, e.g. Santarcangelo dialect ame̥ig [aˈməig] 'friend', ne̥ud [ˈnəud] 'naked'. In Emilian, e̥ can be used to represent unstressed /ə/ in very accurate transcriptions.

Half rings

See also: Modifier letter left half ring and Modifier letter right half ring

Half rings also exist as diacritic marks, these are characters U+0351 ◌͑ COMBINING LEFT HALF RING ABOVE and U+0357 ◌͗ COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING ABOVE. These caracters are used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, respectively for mediopalatal pronunciation and stron onset vowels. These characters may be used in the International Phonetic Alphabet, denoting less and more roundedness, as alternatives to half rings below U+031C ◌̜ COMBINING LEFT HALF RING BELOW and U+0339 ◌̹ COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING BELOW. They are here given with the lowercase a: a͑ and a͗, a̜ and a̹.

U+1E9A ẚ LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH RIGHT HALF RING is similar in appearance but differs from a͗ because its compatibility decomposition uses U+02BE ʾ MODIFIER LETTER RIGHT HALF RING instead of U+0357 ◌͗ COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING ABOVE.

Other, similar signs are in use in Armenian: the U+0559 ◌ՙ ARMENIAN MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING and the U+055A ◌՚ ARMENIAN APOSTROPHE.

Breve and inverted breve are also shaped like half rings, respectively, the bottom and top half of a circle.

Other uses

The ring is used in the transliteration of the Abkhaz language to represent the letter ҩ. It may also be used in place of the abbreviation symbol ॰ when transliterating the Devanagari alphabet.

Similar marks

The ring as a diacritic mark should not be confused with the dot or U+0366 ◌ͦ COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER O diacritic marks, or with the degree sign °.

The half ring as a diacritic mark should not be confused with the comma or ogonek diacritic marks.

References

1. "Proposal to Encode Latin Letters for the Transliteration of Indic Vocalic Letters" (PDF). unicode.org. 2013-10-28.
2. "Draft Minutes of UTC Meeting 137". unicode.org. 2013-11-25.
3. https://archive.org/details/grammarptorlang01trumgoog/page/n44/mode/2up. Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

• Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents