The ‘inverted circumflex’, as in ‘ă’, is in fact more like a lower semicircle than an inversion of the circumflex in ‘â’. It occur alone and in combination with other marks, as in ‘ặ ’, ‘ắ’, and ‘ẵ’.
Linguists writing in English, in which it does not occur, sometimes call it a cup. In the languages in which it is actually used it has other names, different in each language. This is to be expected. The mark over the 'a' in 'ä' is, for example, called a diaresis in English and an umlaut in German. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
