What Is the Breve? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It
A small cup above a letter. Romanian uses ă, Turkish ğ, Vietnamese ă, and Esperanto ŭ.
Letters with the breve: ă ğ ŭ ĕ ĭ ŏ ắ ằ ẳ ẵ ặ
Combining character: U+0306
What the breve does
A small cup above a letter. Romanian uses ă, Turkish ğ, Vietnamese ă, and Esperanto ŭ. Unicode encodes 22 precomposed letters with this mark as their first diacritic, and the combining form U+0306 can add it to any other letter.
Languages that use it
Esperanto, Romanian, Turkish, Vietnamese.
All lowercase letters with the breve
Codes and shortcuts
| Letter | Name | Unicode | Alt code | Mac |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ă | a with breve | U+0103 | — | — |
| ğ | g with breve | U+011F | — | — |
| ŭ | u with breve | U+016D | — | — |
| ĕ | e with breve | U+0115 | — | — |
| ĭ | i with breve | U+012D | — | — |
| ŏ | o with breve | U+014F | — | — |
| ắ | a with breve and acute | U+1EAF | — | — |
| ằ | a with breve and grave | U+1EB1 | — | — |
| ẳ | a with breve and hook above | U+1EB3 | — | — |
| ẵ | a with breve and tilde | U+1EB5 | — | — |
| ặ | a with breve and dot below | U+1EB7 | — | — |
How to type it on any letter
On Windows, hold Alt and type the code from the table, or type the letter followed by U+0306 in Word and press Alt+X. On a Mac, use Unicode Hex Input: type the letter, then hold Option and type 0306. On a Chromebook, type the letter, then Ctrl+Shift+U, 0306, Space.
Copy every letter with the breve
Related guides
- What Is the Acute accent? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It
- What Is the Grave accent? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It
- What Is the Circumflex? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It
- What Is the Umlaut / diaeresis? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It
- What Is the Tilde? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It