The Hacek reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Hacek

A hacek or háček ("ˇ", pronounced HUH-check), also known as a caron, is a diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate palatalization or jotation in the orthography of some Slavic and Baltic languages. It looks similar to breve, but has a sharp tip, like an inverted circumflex (^), while breve is rounded.

The word háček means "little hook" in Czech. In Slovak it is called "mäkčeň" (i.e. "softener" or "palatalization mark"), in Slovenian"strešica" (i.e."little roof").

The use of hacek (and the acute) for Latin characters was introduced by Jan Hus in the 15th century into the Czech language and today it is also used by the Slovaks, Slovenians, Croatians, Serbs, Upper Lusatian and Lower Lusatian Sorbs, Lithuanians and Latvians. It is also often used for international transliteration.

Examples of letters with the háček/caron:

• Č/č (pronounce as English ch)
• Š/š (pronounce as English sh)
• Ž/ž (pronounce as French j)

The caron is also used in Chinese pinyin romanization and orthographies of several other tonal languages to indicate the third or "falling-rising" tone. The caron can be placed on top of the following vowels:

• Ǎ/ǎ
• Ě/ě
• Ǐ/ǐ
• Ǒ/ǒ
• Ǔ/ǔ

The characters Ě/ě are a part of the Unicode Latin Extended-A set while the rest are in Latin Extended-B, which often causes an inconsistent appearance.

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