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.

E with circumflex
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
Typealphabetic
Sound values
In UnicodeU+00CA, U+00EA
History
Development
TransliterationsЄє,
Other
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Usage in various languages

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Afrikaans

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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

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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 vowel in a syllable: /ɛ̂/ (; ; "eh!"). Without the circumflex, e as the only vowel represents /ɤ/: è /ɤ̂/ (饿; ; "hungry"). Elsewhere, /ɛ/ is written as a (after i or ü before n) or e (before or after another vowel), with the appropriate tone mark,: xiān /ɕi̯ɛ́n/ (; "first"), xuǎn /ɕy̯ɛ̀n/ (; ; "to choose", noting that ü is written u after x), xué /ɕy̯ɛ̌ ~ ɕy̯ě/ (; ; "to learn"), xièxie /ɕi̯ɛ̂.ɕi̯ɛ ~ ɕi̯ê.ɕi̯e/ (谢谢; 謝謝; "thanks").

In Pe̍h-ōe-jī, ê is the fifth tone of e: ê (; possessive, adjectival suffix).

French

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Diacritics are not considered to be distinct letters of the French alphabet. In French, ê usually changes the pronunciation of e from /ə/ to /ɛ/. It is used instead of "è" for words that used to be written "es".

Friulian

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Ê represents /eː/ and /ɛː/.

Khmer

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Ê is used in UNGEGN romanization system for Khmer to represent /ae/ and /ɛː/, for example Khmêr (ខ្មែរ [kʰmae]) and Dângrêk Mountains (ដងរែក [ɗɑːŋrɛːk]).

Kurdish

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Ê is the 7th letter of the Kurdish Kurmanji alphabet and represents /eː/.

Norwegian Nynorsk

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In Nynorsk, ê is used to represent the reduction of the Old Norse sequence <eð>, similar to the use of ê for the historical sequence <es> in French. It is mostly used to differentiate words which otherwise would be spelled the same, e.g. vêr 'weather' and ver, imperative of 'to be'.[1]

Persian

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Ê is used in the Persian Latin (Rumi) alphabet, equivalent to ع.

Portuguese

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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 (foot).

Tibetan

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Ê is used in Tibetan pinyin to represent /e/, for example Gêrzê County.

Ukrainian

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Ê is used in the ISO 9:1995 system of Ukrainian transliteration as the letter Є.

Vietnamese

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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

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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

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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

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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 (ê&#772;) and ê̌ (ê&#780;).


Character information
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 &#202; &#xCA; &#234; &#xEA;
Named character reference &Ecirc; &ecirc;
EBCDIC family 114 72 82 52
ISO 8859-1/3/9/14/15/16 202 CA 234 EA

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Danish and Norwegian alphabet", Wikipedia, 2022-11-18, retrieved 2023-02-19