Group - Breve

A breve (pronounced /'bri v/, /'br v/; from the Latin brevis "short, brief") is a diacritical mark , shaped like the bottom half of a circle. It looks similar to the caron (i.e. wedge or hácek in Czech), but the caron has a sharp tip, whilst the breve is rounded. Compare A a E e I i O o U u (caron) with A a E e I i O o U u (breve). The breve sign indicates a short vowel, as opposed to the macron ¯ which indicates long vowels, in academic transcription. It is often used this way in dictionaries and textbooks of Latin, Ancient Greek and some other languages, such as Tuareg. (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 the Cyrillic alphabet, a breve is used for (a semivowel I). In Belarusian, it is used for both the Cyrillic (semivowel U) and in the Latin (Lacinka) U. was also used in Cyrillic Uzbek under the Soviet Union. The Moldovan Cyrillic alphabet uses a breve for (the equivalent of G before E or I in the Latin script). In Chuvash, a breve is used for Cyrillic letters (A-breve) and (Ye-breve).