Macron below
Diacritical mark
| A̱a̱ḆḇC̱c̱ |
|---|
Macron below is a combining diacritical mark that is used in various orthographies.
A non-combining form is U+02CD ˍ MODIFIER LETTER LOW MACRON. It is not to be confused with U+0320 ◌̠ COMBINING MINUS SIGN BELOW, U+0332 ◌̲ COMBINING LOW LINE and U+005F _ LOW LINE. The difference between "macron below" and "low line" is that the latter results in an unbroken underline when it is run together: compare a̱ḇc̱ and a̲b̲c̲ (only the latter should look like abc).
01Unicode
Macron below character
Unicode defines several characters for the macron below:
| macron below | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| combining | spacing | ||||
| character | Unicode | HTML | character | Unicode | HTML |
| ◌̱ single | U+0331 | ̱ | ˍ letter | U+02CD | ˍ |
| ◌͟◌ double | U+035F | ͟ | |||
There are many similar marks covered elsewhere:
- Spacing underscores, including
- U+005F _ LOW LINE (_, _)
- U+2017 ‗ DOUBLE LOW LINE
- Combining underlines, including
- U+0332 ◌̲ COMBINING LOW LINE
- U+0333 ◌̳ COMBINING DOUBLE LOW LINE
- U+0347 ◌͇ COMBINING EQUALS SIGN BELOW;
- U+FE2B ◌︫ COMBINING MACRON LEFT HALF BELOW
- U+FE2C ◌︬ COMBINING MACRON RIGHT HALF BELOW
- U+FE2D ◌︭ COMBINING CONJOINING MACRON BELOW
- International Phonetic Alphabet mark for retracted or backed articulation:
- U+0320 ◌̠ COMBINING MINUS SIGN BELOW
- U+02D7 ˗ MODIFIER LETTER MINUS SIGN
Precomposed characters
Various precomposed letters with a macron below are defined in Unicode:
| upper case | lower case | notes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| letter | Unicode | HTML | letter | Unicode | HTML | |
| Ḇ | U+1E06 | Ḇ | ḇ | U+1E07 | ḇ | Used in the transliteration of Biblical Hebrew into the Roman alphabet to show the fricative value of the letter beth (ב) representing [v], or perhaps [β]. |
| Ḏ | U+1E0E | Ḏ | ḏ | U+1E0F | ḏ | Used in the transliteration of Biblical Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic into the Roman alphabet to show the fricative value of the letter dalet (ד), [ð], and in the romanization of Pashto, it is used sometimes to represent retroflex D. In Dravidian languages' transcription it represents an alveolar /d/. |
| ẖ | U+1E96 | ẖ | Sometimes used for Arabic خ ẖāʼ, Hebrew ח heth, Egyptian 𓄡 (ẖ). There is no precomposed upper case equivalent of ẖ so it uses a combining macron below instead: H̱. | |||
| Ḵ | U+1E34 | Ḵ | ḵ | U+1E35 | ḵ | Used in the transliteration of Biblical Hebrew into the Roman alphabet to show the fricative value of the letter kaph (כ) representing [x]. Used in Tlingit and Haida (among other Pacific Northwest languages) for the voiceless uvular stop [q]. Close to Korean ㄲ kk; closest English "shocking". Used optionally in the K-dialect of Māori in the South Island of New Zealand, where an original ng has merged with k. The ḵ indicates that it corresponds to ng in other dialects. There is no difference in pronunciation between ḵ and k. |
| Ḻ | U+1E3A | Ḻ | ḻ | U+1E3B | ḻ | Used in Pitjantjatjara to represent [ɭ]. One possible transliteration of the Dravidian retroflex approximant /ɻ/ as in Tamil letter ழ. Ḻ is used in the Seri language to represent [l], like English l, while unmodified "l" represents [ɬ], like Welsh ll. It is also used in the proposed Unified Alphabet for Mapudungun. |
| Ṉ | U+1E48 | Ṉ | ṉ | U+1E49 | ṉ | Used in Pitjantjatjara to represent [ɳ], and in Saanich to represent both plain and glottalized [ɴ]. In the romanization of Pashto, it is used sometimes to represent retroflex N. In Dravidian languages' transcription it represents an alveolar /n/. |
| Ṟ | U+1E5E | Ṟ | ṟ | U+1E5F | ṟ | Used in Pitjantjatjara to represent [ɻ], and sometimes in the romanization of Pashto to represent the retroflex R. In Dravidian languages' transcription it represents an alveolar trill /r/. |
| Ṯ | U+1E6E | Ṯ | ṯ | U+1E6F | ṯ | Used in the proposed Unified Alphabet for Mapudungun language representing [t̪]. In the romanization of Pashto, it is used sometimes to represent retroflex T. In Dravidian languages' transcription it represents an alveolar /t/. In the romanization of Arabic this letter is used to transcribe the letter Ṯāʾ. |
| Ẕ | U+1E94 | Ẕ | ẕ | U+1E95 | ẕ | Used in the 1953 Hebrew Academy Romanization of Hebrew to represent tsade (צ). |
| ₫ | U+20AB | ₫ | Vietnamese đồng. | |||
Note that the Unicode character names of precomposed characters whose decompositions contain U+0331 ◌̱ COMBINING MACRON BELOW use "WITH LINE BELOW" rather than "WITH MACRON BELOW". Thus, U+1E07 ḇ LATIN SMALL LETTER B WITH LINE BELOW decomposes to U+0062 b LATIN SMALL LETTER B and U+0331 ◌̱ COMBINING MACRON BELOW.
The Vietnamese đồng currency sign resembles a lower case d with a stroke and macron below: U+20AB ₫ DONG SIGN but is neither a letter nor decomposable.
02Use
In Comanche, voiceless vowels are marked with a macron below (these are ⟨a̱⟩, ⟨e̱⟩, ⟨i̠⟩, ⟨o̱⟩, ⟨u̱⟩, and ⟨ʉ̱⟩).
In Swedish, o̱ is frequently used as a substitute for &, particularly in handwriting and in prose.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Macron below”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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