MACRON

Ā	ā
Ē	ē
Ī	ī
Ō	ō
Ū	ū
Ǖ	ǖ

A 'macron', from Greek μακρόv (''makrón'') meaning "long", is a diacritic ¯ placed over a vowel which was originally used to mark a long (i.e. heavy) ''syllable'' in Græco-Roman metrics, but has now been taken also to indicate that the ''vowel'' is long. The opposite is a breve ˘, used to indicate originally a short syllable and now also a short vowel. Distinctions between long and short vowels are usually phonemic. The sign to indicate a long vowel in the International Phonetic Alphabet is a modified triangular colon.

Contents

Syllable weight

Vowel Length

Tone

Other uses

Non-diacritical usage

Technical notes

References

See also

Letters with a macron

Related topics

External links

Syllable weight

In Græco-Roman metrics, and hence in the description of the metrics of other literatures, the macron was introduced, and is still widely used, to mark a long (i.e. heavy) syllable. Even the best and relatively recent classical Greek and Latin dictionaries^[1] are still only concerned with indicating the length (i.e. weight) of syllables, and that's why most still don't care to indicate the length of vowels that are in syllables which are otherwise metrically determined.

Vowel Length

The following languages or transliteration systems use the macron to mark long vowels:

★ Some modern dictionaries of classical Greek and Latin, where the macron is sometimes used in conjunction with the breve, which marks short vowels. However, many such dictionaries still present ambiguities in their treatment and distinction of long vowels vs heavy syllables.

★ Hawaiian. The macron is called ''kahakō'', and it indicates vowel length, which changes meaning and the placement of stress.

★ The Hepburn romanization system of Japanese. Examples: ''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.

★ Latvian. "Ā", "ē", "ī", "ū" 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.

★ Lithuanian. "Ū" is considered a separate letter but given the same position in collation as the unaccented "u". It marks a long vowel; other long vowels are indicated with an ogonek (which used to indicate nasalization, but no longer does): "ą", "ę", "į", "ų", "o" being always long in Lithuanian words except for some recent loanwords. For the long counterpart of "i", the letter "y" is used.

★ Māori. Early writing in Māori did not distinguish vowel length. Some — notably the late Professor Bruce Biggs^[2] — 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 words for macron are ''pōtae'' "hat", or ''tohuto''.

★ Tongan. Called the ''toloi'', its usage is similar to that in Māori, including its substitution by a diaeresis.

★ Modern transcriptions of Old English.

★ Latin transliteration of Pali and Sanskrit.

★ Transciptions of Nahuatl (spoken in Mexico). Since Nahuatl (Nāhuatl) (aztec's language) didn't have a writing system, when Spanish conquistadors arrived to Mexico, they wrote the language with their own alphabet without distinction on long vowels. Over a century later in 1645, Horacio Carochi defined macrons to mark long vowels ā, ē, ī and ō as well as short vowels with grave (`) accents. This is rare however nowadays since many people write Nahuatl in the modern way without any ortographic sign and the inclussion of letters /k/, /s/ and /w/, not present in the original alphabet. Some projects however have preferred to use the macron-based writing as can be seen on the .

★ Transcriptions of Arabic typically use macrons to indicate long vowels — ا (alif when pronounced as /aː/), و (waw, when pronounced as /uː/), and ي (ya', when pronounced as /iː/). Thus the Arabic word ثلاثة (three) is transliterated ''ṯalāṯah''.

Tone

The following languages or alphabets use the macron to mark tones:

★ In the International Phonetic Alphabet, a macron over a vowel indicates a mid-level tone.

★ 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.

Other uses

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

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

★ 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 Russian handwriting, a lowercase ''Т'' looks like a lowercase ''m'', and a macron is often used to distinguish it from ''Ш'', which looks like a lowercase ''w''. Some writers also underline the letter ''ш'', to further reduce ambiguity.

★ In music, the tenuto marking bears resemblance to the macron

Non-diacritical usage

★ In medical prescriptions and other handwritten notes, a macron over a 'c' can mean ''with'', as an abbreviation for the Latin word ''cum''; similarly, a macron over an 's' can mean ''without'', abbreviating ''sine'', and a macron over a ''q'' means ''every''.

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

Technical notes

Pre-composed characters

Upper Case		Lower Case
Character	HTML Code	Character	HTML Code
Ā	Ā	ā	ā
Ē	Ē	ē	ē
Ī	Ī	ī	ī
Ō	Ō	ō	ō
Ū	Ū	ū	ū
Ǖ	Ǖ	ǖ	ǖ
	Ȳ		ȳ

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.

References

1. P.G.W. Glare (ed.), ''Oxford Latin Dictionary'' (Oxford at the Clarendon Press 1990), p. xxiii: ''Vowel quantities. Normally only long vowels in a metrically indeterminate position are marked''.
2. Yearbook of the Academy Council - 2000, Royal Society of New Zealand

See also

Letters with a macron

★ Ā ā

★ Ȳ ȳ

Related topics

★ Overbar

★ Tilde

★ Circumflex

★ Combining macron below

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.