Translingual

Description

A horizontal line to be placed above other characters.

Diacritical mark

¯

1. (linguistics) Used to indicate mid tone.
2. See ‾ for the overline, which is used in mathematics.

Usage notes

In English, this is called macron.

See also

• ‾ (a line above, used to mark repeating digits)

Japanese

Diacritical mark

¯

1. A diacritical mark of the Latin script, called マクロン ‎(“macron”) in Japanese, and found on Ā/ā, Ē/ē, Ī/ī, Ō/ō and Ū/ū.

Usage notes

In a number of romanization systems of Japanese, particularly Hepburn, the macron indicates that a vowel is a long vowel.

Other romanization systems, particularly Kunrei-shiki, use the circumflex (^) for that purpose.

Latin

Diacritical mark

¯

1. A diacritical mark of the Latin script, called macron ‎(“macron”) in Latin, and found on Ā/ā, Ē/ē, Ī/ī, Ō/ō and Ū/ū.

Latvian

Diacritical mark

¯

1. A diacritical mark of the Latin script, called garumzīme ‎(“macron”) in Latvian, and found on Ā/ā, Ē/ē, Ī/ī and Ū/ū.

Usage notes

• Used to mark long vowels: ā = [aː], ē = [ɛː] or [æː], ī = [iː], ū = [uː].
• For a short while (1908-1919), it was also used with the letter o (ō) to mark long [oː] in words of foreign origin, but this usage has since then been abandoned.
• Letters with macrons are considered as separate letters with different names, and listed in the alphabet after the same letters without macron (i.e., ā after a, ē after e, ī after i, and ū after u). In actual practice, however, letters with and without macrons are treated as the same letter in alphabetized lists (e.g., in dictionaries), unlike letters with cedillas (ģ, ķ, ļ, ņ) or háčeks (č, š, ž), which are kept separate in alphabetized lists.

Mandarin

Diacritical mark

¯

1. A diacritical mark of the Latin script, called 長音符號 ‎(“macron”) in Mandarin, and found on Ā/ā, Ē/ē, Ī/ī, Ō/ō, Ū/ū and Ǖ/ǖ.