Ě
The grapheme Ě, ě (E with caron) is used in Czech, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian alphabets.
Czech
The letter ě is a vestige of Old-Czech palatalization. The originally palatalizing phoneme /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. But in some words (vjezd, entry, drive-in, objem, volume), bje, vje is written because –je- is part of the etymological root of the word, preceded by the prefix v- or ob-.
- Mě [mɲɛ] is written instead of mňe. For etymological reasons, mně is written in some words (jemný, soft -> jemně, softly).
Croatian
The grapheme is also use in Croatian to denote a jat (něsam, věra, lěpo, pověst, tělo...) and could be pronounce depending on specific reflex : Ekavian (nesam, vera, lepo, povest, telo...), Ikavian (nisam, vira, lipo, povist, tilo...) or Jekavian ("nijesam, vjera, lijepo, povijest, tijelo..."). Historically its use was very wide spread, today it is only found in scientific and historically accurate literature.
Chinese
Pinyin uses this ě (e caron), not the e breve (ĕ), to indicate the third tone of Mandarin Chinese.
Encoding
| Character | Ě | ě | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH CARON | LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH CARON | ||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | decimal | 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 |
| ISO 8859-2 | 204 | CC | 236 | EC |