Breve

This article is about the breve as a diacritical mark. For a breve in music, see double whole note.

A breve is a diacritical mark ˘ like a little round cup, in Romanian possible above the a (the ə schwa vowel) and in Esperanto possible above the u. It is also widely used in pronunciation keys to indicate that a vowel has a short sound. It looks similar to caron (háček), but caron has a sharp tip, while breve is rounded.

The HTML/Unicode numbers for breve letters are:

Description	Upper Case		Lower Case
	Letter	HTML	Letter	HTML
A-breve	Ă	Ă	ă	ă
E-breve	Ĕ	Ĕ	ĕ	ĕ
I-breve	Ĭ	Ĭ	ĭ	ĭ
O-breve	Ŏ	Ŏ	ŏ	ŏ
U-breve	Ŭ	Ŭ	ŭ	ŭ
G-breve	Ğ	Ğ	ğ	ğ
	Ắ	Ắ	ắ	ắ
	Ằ	Ằ	ằ	ằ
	Ẳ	Ẳ	ẳ	ẳ
	Ẵ	Ẵ	ẵ	ẵ
	Ặ	Ặ	ặ	ặ

The last rows are the letter A/a with breve and acute, grave, hook, tilde, and dot, respectively. These are mainly used in the Vietnamese language.

In Cyrillic alphabet, breve is used for "short I": "Й". Also, in Belarusian language, "short U": "Ў" exists, pronounced like the "u" part in diphthongs in "now", "low". Ў also was used in Cyrillic Uzbek. Letters looking like Ă and Ĕ are used in Chuvash alphabet.