The grapheme Ě, ě (E with caron) is used in Czech and Sorbian alphabets, in Pinyin, in Javanese, in Sundanese and in Proto-Slavic notation.

Majuscule and minuscule ě.

Czech

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The letter ě is a vestige of Old-Czech palatalization. The originally palatalizing phoneme, yat /ě/ [ʲɛ], became extinct, changing to [ɛ] or [jɛ], but it is preserved as a grapheme.

This letter never appears in the initial position, and its pronunciation depends on the preceding consonant:

  • Dě, tě, ně [ɟɛ, cɛ, ɲɛ] is written instead of ďe, ťe, ňe (analogously to di, ti, ni).
  • Bě, pě, vě, fě is written instead of bje, pje, vje, fje. Nevertheless, some words (vjezd, "entry, drive-in"; objem, "volume") are written with bje, vje because –je- is part of the etymological root of the word, preceded by the prefix v- or ob-.
  • [mɲɛ] is written instead of mňe. For etymological reasons, mně is written in some words (jemný, "soft" -> jemně, "softly").

Serbo-Croatian

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The grapheme is sometimes used in Serbo-Croatian to denote a jat (něsam, věra, lěpo, pověst, tělo). It is pronounced in different ways depending on dialect: Ekavian (nesam, vera, lepo, povest, telo), Ikavian (nisam, vira, lipo, povist, tilo) or Ijekavian (nijesam, vjera, lijepo, povijest, tijelo). Historically its use was very widespread, but it gradually lost favour to combined j and e graphemes and it was eventually dropped from the Gaj's Latin alphabet; it is only found in scientific and historically accurate literature.

Chinese

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Pinyin uses this ě (e caron), not the e breve (ĕ), to indicate the third tone of Mandarin Chinese.

Javanese

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Javanese uses ě (e caron), to indicate pěpět (schwa) ⟨ə⟩.

Sundanese

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Same as Javanese, ě (e caron) in Sundanese also indicates pěpět (schwa) ⟨ə⟩.

Encoding

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Character information
Preview Ě ě
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH CARON LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH CARON
Encodings decimal hex dec hex
Unicode 282 U+011A 283 U+011B
UTF-8 196 154 C4 9A 196 155 C4 9B
Numeric character reference Ě Ě ě ě
Named character reference Ě ě
ISO 8859-2 204 CC 236 EC

[1]

References

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  1. ^ "Unicode Character "Ě" (U+011A)". Compart. Oak Brook, IL: Compart AG. 2021. Retrieved 2024-02-17.