Macron (diacritic)

Uses

Syllable weight

Vowel length

• Slavicists use the macron to indicate a non-tonic long vowel, or a non-tonic syllabic liquid, such as on l, lj, m, n, nj, and r. Languages with this feature include standard and dialect varieties of Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, and Bulgarian.
• Transcriptions of Arabic typically use macrons to indicate long vowels – ا, و, and ي. Thus the Arabic word ثلاثة is transliterated thalāthah.
• Transcriptions of Sanskrit typically use a macron over ā, ī, ū, ṝ, and ḹ in order to mark a long vowel.
• In Latin, many of the more recent dictionaries and learning materials use the macron as the modern equivalent of the ancient Roman apex to mark long vowels. Any of the 6 vowel letters can bear it. It is sometimes used in conjunction with the breve, especially to distinguish the short vowels /i/ and /u/ from their semi-vowel counterparts /j/ and /w/, originally, and often to this day, spelt with the same letters. However, the older of these editions are not always explicit on whether they mark long vowels or heavy syllables – a confusion that is even found in some modern learning materials. In addition, most of the newest academic publications use both the macron and the breve sparingly, mainly when vowel length is relevant to the discussion.
• In romanization of classical Greek, the letters η and ω are transliterated, respectively, as ē and ō, representing the long vowels of classical Greek, whereas the short vowels ε and ο are always transliterated as plain e and o. The other long vowel phonemes don't have dedicated letters in the Greek alphabet, being indicated by digraphs or by the letters α, ι, υ – represented as ā, ī, ū. The same three letters are transliterated as plain a, i, u when representing short vowels.
• The Hepburn romanization system of Japanese, for example, kōtsū "traffic" as opposed to kotsu "bone" or "knack".
• The Syriac language uses macrons to indicate long vowels in its romanized transliteration: ā for /aː/, ē for /eː/, ū for /uː/ and ō for /ɔː/.
• Baltic languages and Baltic-Finnic languages:
• * Latvian. ā, ē, ī, ū are separate letters but are given the same position in collation as a, e, i, u respectively. Ō was also used in Latvian, but it was discarded as of 1946.
• * Lithuanian. ū is a separate letter but is given the same position in collation as the unaccented u. It marks a long vowel; other long vowels are indicated with an ogonek : ą, ę, į, ų and o being always long in Lithuanian except for some recent loanwords. For the long counterpart of i, y is used.
• * Livonian. ā, ǟ, ē, ī, ō, ȱ, ȭ and ū are separate letters that sort in alphabetical order immediately after a, ä, e, i, o, ȯ, õ, and u, respectively.
• * Samogitian. ā, ē, ė̄, ī, ū and ō are separate letters that sort in alphabetical order immediately after a, e, ė, i, u and o respectively.
• Transcriptions of Nahuatl, the Aztecs' language, spoken in Mexico. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived, they wrote the language in their own alphabet without distinguishing long vowels. Over a century later, in 1645, Horacio Carochi defined macrons to mark long vowels ā, ē, ī and ō, and short vowels with grave accents. This is rare nowadays since many people write Nahuatl without any orthographic sign and with the letters k, s and w, not present in the original alphabet.
• Modern transcriptions of Old English.
• The ISO 259 Romanization of Hebrew uses ḡ to represent /ɣ/.
• Latin transliteration of Pali and Sanskrit, and in the IAST and ISO 15919 transcriptions of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages.
• Polynesian languages:
• *Cook Islands Māori. In Cook Islands Māori, the macron or mākarōna is not commonly used in writing, but is used in references and teaching materials for those learning the language.
• * Hawaiian. The macron is called kahakō, and it indicates vowel length, which changes meaning and the placement of stress.
• *Māori. In modern written Māori, the macron is used to designate long vowels, with the trema mark sometimes used if the macron is unavailable. The Māori word for macron is tohutō. The term pōtae is also used. In the past, writing in Māori either did not distinguish vowel length, or doubled long vowels, as some iwi dialects still do.
• * Niuean. In Niuean, "popular spelling" does not worry too much about vowel quantity, so the macron is primarily used in scholarly study of the language.
• * Tahitian. The use of the macron is comparatively recent in Tahitian. The Fare Vānaa or Académie Tahitienne recommends using the macron, called the tārava, to represent long vowels in written text, especially for scientific or teaching texts and it has widespread acceptance..
• * Tongan and Samoan. The macron is called the toloi/fakamamafa or fa'amamafa, respectively. Its usage is similar to that in Māori, including its substitution by a trema. Its usage is not universal in Samoan, but recent academic publications and advanced study textbooks promote its use.
• The macron is used in Fijian language dictionaries, in instructional materials for non-Fijian speakers, and in books and papers on Fijian linguistics. It is not typically used in Fijian publications intended for fluent speakers, where context is usually sufficient for a reader to distinguish between heteronyms.
• Both Cyrillic and Latin transcriptions of Udege.
• The Latin and Cyrillic alphabet transcriptions of the Tsebari dialect of Tsez.
• In western Cree, Sauk, and Saulteaux, the Algonquianist Standard Roman Orthography indicates long vowels either with a circumflex ⟨â ê î ô⟩ or with a macron ⟨ā ē ī ō⟩.

  Tone

• In the International Phonetic Alphabet, a macron over a vowel indicates a mid-level tone.
• In Pinyin, the official Romanization of Mandarin Chinese, macrons over a, e, i, o, u, ü indicate the high level tone of Mandarin Chinese. The alternative to the macron is the number 1 after the syllable.
• Similarly in the Yale romanization of Cantonese, macrons over a, e, i, o, u, m, n indicate the high level tone of Cantonese. Like Mandarin, the alternative to the macron is the number 1 after the syllable.
• In Pe̍h-ōe-jī romanization of Hokkien, macrons over a, e, i, m, n, o, o͘, u, indicate the mid level tone of Hokkien.

  Omission

• In Old English texts a macron above a letter indicates the omission of an m or n that would normally follow that letter.
• In older handwriting such as the German Kurrentschrift, the macron over an a-e-i-o-u or ä-ö-ü stood for an n, or over an m or an n meant that the letter was doubled. This continued into print in English in the sixteenth century, and to some extent in German. Over a u at the end of a word, the macron indicated um as a form of scribal abbreviation.

  Letter extension

• The letter ā is pronounced, the palatalized allophone of the phoneme.
• The letter n̄ represents the velar nasal phoneme and the labialized velar nasal phoneme, depending on context. The standard letter does not exist as a precombined glyph in Unicode, so the nonstandard variant ñ is often used in its place.
• The letter ō is pronounced or, which are the unrounded velarized allophones of the phonemes and respectively.
• The letter ū is pronounced, the unrounded velarized allophone of the phoneme.

  Other uses

• In classical Malay, ā and ē represents mid central vowel.
• In older German and in the German Kurrent handwriting, a macron is used on some consonants, especially n and m, as a short form for a double consonant.
• In modernized Hepburn romanization of Japanese, an n with macron represents a syllabic n.
• In Russian cursive, as well as in some others based on the Cyrillic script, 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 reduce ambiguity further.

• In some Finnish, Estonian and Swedish comic books that are hand-lettered, or in handwriting, a macron-style umlaut is used for ä or ö, sometimes known colloquially as a "lazy man's umlaut". This can also be seen in some modern handwritten German.
• In Norwegian ū,ā, ī, ē and ō can be used for decorative purposes both in handwritten and computed Bokmål and Nynorsk or to denote vowel length such as in dū, lā, lēser and lūft. The diacritic is entirely optional, carries no IPA value and is seldom used in modern Norwegian outside of handwriting.
• In informal Hungarian handwriting, a macron is often a substitute for either a double acute accent or an umlaut. Because of this ambiguity, using it is often regarded as bad practice.
• In informal handwriting, the Spanish ñ is sometimes written with a macron-shaped tilde:.

  Medicine

• ā, before, abbreviating Latin ante
• c̄, with, abbreviating Latin '
• p̄, after, abbreviating Latin '
• q̄, every, abbreviating Latin '
• s̄, without, abbreviating Latin '
• x̄, except

  Mathematics and science

Music

Technical notes

• CJK fullwidth variety:
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• Kazakhstani tenge
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• Overlines
• Characters using a macron below instead of above
• Tone contour transcription characters incorporating a macron:
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• Two intonation marks historically used by Antanas Baranauskas for Lithuanian dialectology:
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