Macron

From Encyclopedia Jr, free information reference for Kids

A macron, from Greek μακρός (makros) meaning "large", is a diacritic ¯ placed over a vowel originally to indicate that the vowel is long. The opposite is a breve ˘, used to indicate a short vowel. These distinctions are usually phonemic.

In modern Old English transliterations, the macron has been used in this way.

In Latvian, A-macron, E-macron, I-macron and U-macron are considered separate letters that sort in alphabetical order immediately after A, E, I, U respectively. For instance, baznīca comes before bārda in a Latvian dictionary.

In Lithuanian, U-macron is considered a separate letter but given the same position in collation as the unaccented U. Ū shows a prolonged vowel; other long vowels are used with ogonek (no longer nasal): Ą, Ę, Į, Ų and O being always long vowel in Lithuanian words except for some recent loanwords. For the prolonged counterpart of i, the letter Y is used.

In pinyin, macrons are used over a, e, i, o, u, ü (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, ǖ) to indicate the first tone of Mandarin Chinese. It does not indicate vowel length in any way.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, macron over a vowel indicates a mid-level tone, and not length.

In Hawaiian (where it is known as the kahakō) it is again used to indicate long vowels, which in turn influence the placement of accent stress in words.

In Māori it indicates vowel length, which changes meaning and the placement of stress. Early writing in Māori did not distinguish vowel length. Some — notably the late Professor Bruce Biggs — have advocated that double vowels be written to mark long vowel sounds (e.g. "Maaori"), but even he was more concerned that they be marked at all than with the method. However, the Māori Language Commission (Te Taura Whiri o te Reo Māori) advocate macrons be used to designate long vowels. The use of the macron is now widespread in modern Māori writing, though some people fall back on a diaeresis mark instead (e.g. "Mäori" instead of "Māori") when a macron is not available, and this confuses people who are unfamiliar with either. The Māori for macron is pōtae, "hat".

It is also used in many dictionaries and textbooks to mark vowel length in languages that do not feature this diacritic in everyday use; for example it is used in the Hepburn transcription of Japanese to indicate a long vowel, as in kōtsū (交通) "traffic" as opposed to kotsu (骨) "bone" or "knack (fig.)". The indigenous Japanese kana transcription of 交通, however, is こうつう, which character for character transliterates as koutsuu. Although not standard, this latter system is arguably the most commonly seen on the Internet, next to not marking vowel length at all.

The macron is often used in modern Latin (and modern old Greek) dictionaries and textbooks to mark long vowels, sometimes in conjunction with the breve, which marks short vowels. However, there is a frequent convention of indicating only (but all) the long vowels: it is then understood that a vowel with no macron is short.

In some German handwriting styles, a macron is used to distinguish u from n.

In the French comic books which are hand-lettered all in capitals, the macron replaces the circumflex.

In Russian handwriting, a macron is often used over a lowercase т to distinguish it from Ш. A handwritten lowercase Russian т—which is lowercase Cyrillic Т, not an М—thus looks like an English lowercase m with a macron. Some utilize a macron underneath the letter ш, as well.

In Unicode, "combining macron" is one of the combining diacritical marks, its code is U+0304 (in HTML, ̄ or ̄). This should be distinguished from the "macron" at U+00AF ¯, from the "modifier letter macron" at U+02C9 ˉ and from the combining overline at U+0305 ̅. There are also several precomposed characters; their HTML/Unicode numbers are as in the table to the right. In LaTeX a macron is created with the command "\=" for example: M\=aori.

If the last two rows of the table do not display properly, the row before the last is the letter Uu with diaeresis (Ü ü) and macron, used in pinyin. The final row is the letter Yy with macron, used sometimes in teaching Latin.

In older handwriting styles, such as the German schrift, the macron over an m or an n meant that the letter was doubled. This continued into print in English in the sixteenth century. Over a u at the end of a word, the macron indicated um as a form of scribal abbreviation.

In mathematics, and especially statistics the macron is often used to indicate a mean (e.g as the average value of x_i).

[edit] See also

• overbar

[edit] External links

• Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents
• He Kupu o te Rā Information about typing macrons, macron support in email packages, and TXTing macrons.