Syllable weight In
Greco-Roman metrics and in the description of the metrics of other literatures, the macron was introduced and is still widely used in dictionaries and educational materials to mark a
long (heavy) syllable. Even relatively recent classical Greek and Latin dictionaries are still concerned with indicating only the length (weight) of syllables; that is why most still do not indicate the length of vowels in syllables that are otherwise metrically determined. Many textbooks about Ancient Rome and Greece use the macron, even if it was not actually used at that time (an
apex was used if vowel length was marked in Latin).
Vowel length The following languages or transliteration systems use the macron to mark
long vowels: •
Slavicists use the macron to indicate a non-tonic long vowel, or a non-tonic syllabic liquid, such as on
a,
e,
r, or
u. Languages with this feature include standard and dialect varieties of
Silesian,
Serbo-Croatian,
Slovene, and
Bulgarian. • Transcriptions of
Arabic typically use macrons to indicate long vowels – (
alif when pronounced ), (
waw, when pronounced or ), and (
ya', when pronounced or ). Thus the Arabic word (three) is transliterated
ṯalāṯah. • Transcriptions of
Sanskrit typically use a macron over ā, ī, ū, ṝ, and ḹ in order to mark a long vowel (e and o are always long and consequently do not need any macron). • 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 six vowel letters
(ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, ȳ) can bear it. It is sometimes used in conjunction with the
breve, especially to distinguish the short vowels and from their semi-vowel counterparts and , 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 (
eta) and
ω (
omega) are transliterated, respectively, as
ē and
ō, representing the long vowels of classical Greek, whereas the short vowels
ε (
epsilon) and
ο (
omicron) are always transliterated as plain
e and
o. The other long vowel phonemes do not have dedicated letters in the
Greek alphabet, being indicated by digraphs (transliterated likewise as 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,
tā () as opposed to
ta (). • The
Syriac language uses macrons to indicate long vowels in its romanized transliteration:
ā for ,
ē for ,
ū for and
ō for . •
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. Some usage remains in
Latgalian. •
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 (which used to indicate nasalization, but it no longer does):
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, for long vowels. • 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 (e.g. "wähine"). The Māori word for macron is
tohutō. The term
pōtae ("hat") is also used. In the past, writing in Māori either did not distinguish vowel length, or doubled long vowels (e.g. "waahine"), as some
iwi dialects still do. •
Niuean. In Niuean, "popular spelling" does not worry too much about vowel quantity (length), 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 (Tahitian Academy) 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. (In the past, written Tahitian either did not distinguish vowel length, or used multiple other ways). •
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 (SRO) indicates long vowels either with a
circumflex ⟨
â ê î ô⟩ or with a macron ⟨
ā ē ī ō⟩.
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
Yoruba an optional macron can be used to indicate mid-level tone if it would otherwise be ambiguous. • In
Pinyin, the official
Romanization of Mandarin Chinese, macrons over a, e, i, o, u, ü (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, ǖ) indicate the high level
tone of
Mandarin Chinese. The alternative to the macron is the number 1 after the syllable (for example, tā = ta1). • Similarly in the
Yale romanization of Cantonese, macrons over a, e, i, o, u, m, n (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, m̄, n̄) indicate the high level
tone of
Cantonese. Like Mandarin, the alternative to the macron is the number 1 after the syllable (for example, tā = ta1). • In
Pe̍h-ōe-jī romanization of
Hokkien, macrons over a, e, i, m, n, o, o͘, u, (ā, ē, ī, m̄, n̄, ō, ō͘, ū) indicate the mid level
tone ("light departing" or 7th tone) of Hokkien.
Omission Sometimes the macron marks an omitted
n or
m, like the
tilde, in which context it is referred to as a "": • 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 In
romanizations of Hebrew, the
macron below is typically used to mark the
begadkefat consonant
lenition. However, for typographical reasons a regular macron is used on
p and
g instead:
p̄, ḡ. The macron is used in the orthography of a number of vernacular languages of the
Solomon Islands and
Vanuatu, particularly those first transcribed by
Anglican missionaries. The macron has no unique value, and is simply used to distinguish between two different phonemes. Thus, in several languages of the
Banks Islands, including
Mwotlap, the simple
m stands for , but an
m with a macron (
m̄) is a
rounded labial-velar nasal ; while the simple
n stands for the common
alveolar nasal , an
n with macron (
n̄) represents the
velar nasal ; the vowel
ē stands for a (short) higher by contrast with plain
e ; likewise
ō contrasts with plain
o . In
Hiw orthography, the consonant
r̄ stands for the prestopped
velar lateral approximant . In
Araki, the same symbol
r̄ encodes the
alveolar trill – by contrast with
r, which encodes the
alveolar flap . In
Bislama (orthography before 1995),
Lamenu and
Lewo, a macron is used on two letters ''
. m̄
represents , and p̄
represents . The orthography after 1995 (which has no diacritics) has these written as mw
and pw''. In
Kokota,
ḡ is used for the
velar stop , but
g without macron is the
voiced velar fricative . In
Marshallese, a macron is used on four letters – '
– whose pronunciations differ from the unmarked '. Marshallese uses a
vertical vowel system with three to four vowel phonemes, but traditionally their allophones have been written out, so vowel letters with macron are used for some of these allophones. Though the standard diacritic involved is a macron, there are no other diacritics used
above letters, so in practice other diacritics can and have been used in less polished writing or print, yielding nonstandard letters like '''', depending on displayability of letters in
computer fonts. • The letter '''' is pronounced , the
palatalized allophone of the phoneme . • The letter '
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 ' is often used in its place. • The letter '''' is pronounced or , which are the
unrounded velarized allophones of the phonemes and respectively. • The letter '''' is pronounced , the unrounded velarized allophone of the phoneme . In
Obolo, the simple
n stands for the common
alveolar nasal , while an
n with macron (
n̄) represents the
velar nasal .
Other uses • In older
German and in the German
Kurrent handwriting, as well as older
Danish, a macron is used on some consonants, especially n and m, as a short form for a double consonant (for example,
n̄ instead of
nn). • showing a stylized macron above the ⟨
т⟩ in "Достоевскій" In
Russian cursive, as well as in some others based on the
Cyrillic script (for example,
Bulgarian), 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 (see
Т). Some writers also underline the letter
ш to reduce ambiguity further. Also, in some instances, a diacritic will be written like a macron, although it represents another diacritic whose standard form is different: • In some
Finnish,
Estonian and
Swedish handwriting, a macron-style umlaut is used for
ä or
ö (also
õ and
ü in Estonian), 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 (you),
lā (infinitive form of to let), lēser (present form of "to read") and
lūft (air). 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 (e.g.,
ö or
ő). 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: (
n̄).
Medicine Continuing previous
Latin scribal abbreviations, letters with combining macron can be used in various European languages to represent the
overlines indicating various
medical abbreviations, particularly including: •
ā for ("before") •
c̄ for ("with") •
p̄ for ("after") •
q̄ for and its inflections ("every", "each") •
s̄ for ("without") •
x̄ for and its inflections ("except") Note, however, that abbreviations involving the letter h take their macron halfway up the ascending line rather than at the normal height for unicode macrons and overlines:
ħ. This is separately encoded in
Unicode with the symbols using
bar diacritics and appears shorter than other macrons in many fonts.
Mathematics and science The
overline is a typographical symbol visually similar to the macron, used in a number of ways in mathematics and science. For example, it is used to represent
complex conjugation: z = a + bi; \quad \overline{z} = a - bi and to represent a
line segment in geometry (e.g., \overline{AB} ),
sample means in statistics (e.g., \overline{X} ) and
negations in
logic. It is also used in
Hermann–Mauguin notation.
Music In music, the
tenuto marking resembles the macron. The macron is also used in German
lute tablature to distinguish repeating alphabetic characters. == Letters with macron ==