Breve
A breve is a diacritical mark ˘ like a little round cup, in Romanian possible above the a (the ə schwa vowel) and in Esperanto possible above the u. It is also widely used in pronunciation keys to indicate that a vowel has a short sound.The HTM/Unicode numbers for breve letters are:
| Upper Case | Lower Case | ||
| Letter | HTML | Letter | HTML |
| Ă | Ă | ă | ă |
| Ĕ | Ĕ | ĕ | ĕ |
| Ĭ | Ĭ | ĭ | ĭ |
| Ŏ | Ŏ | ŏ | ŏ |
| Ŭ | Ŭ | ŭ | ŭ |
| Ğ | Ğ | ğ | ğ |
| Ắ | Ắ | ắ | ắ |
| Ằ | Ằ | ằ | ằ |
| Ẳ | Ẳ | ẳ | ẳ |
| Ẵ | Ẵ | ẵ | ẵ |
| Ặ | Ặ | ặ | ặ |
The last rows are the letter A/a with breve and acute, grave, hook, tilde, and dot, respectively. These are mainly used in the Vietnamese language.
A breve is also a note in music, lasting twice as long as a semibreve (or whole note). Because it lasts longer than a bar in most modern time signatures, it is now rarely encountered, but in Mediaeval music it was the shortest note length, and could be either a half or a third as long as the longa.
