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" ("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. Besides the hacek and acute (carka), the Czechs are also using krouzek (ring). A complete list of Czech and Slovak letters with the háček/caron:\n* Č/č (pronounce as English ch, e.g. Československo which means Czechoslovakia)\n* Š/š (pronounce as English sh, e.g. in Luboš Motl)\n* Ž/ž (pronounce as French j or "Russian" zh, e.g. žal which means sorrow)\n* Ř/ř (only in Czech: pronounce roughly as rz, e.g. Antonín Dvořák)\n* Ď,Ť,Ň/ď,ť,ň (pronounce as softened d,t,n: "Ďábel a sťatý kůň" which means "Devil and beheaded horse")\n* Ľ,ľ (only in Slovak: pronounce as softened l: "podnikateľ" means "businessman") Moreover, the vowel "Ě/ě" (only in Czech) indicates that the consonant in front of this vowel must be softened. In printed text, the caron combined with some particular letters is reduced to a small line (like in ť ď ľ Ľ). This only rarely happens in hand written text. Although the small line may look like an apostrophe, it's definitely not the case. Using apostrophe in place of an caron looks very unprofessional and is quite common on goods produced in foreign countries and imported to Slovakia or the Czech Republic (compare L' Ľ, t' ť, L'ahko Ľahko). Foreigners also sometimes mistake caron for acute on mentioned letters (compare Ĺ Ľ, ĺ ľ). 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\n* Ě/ě\n* Ǐ/ǐ\n* Ǒ/ǒ\n* 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. Hacek can be written in TeX using the sequence \\v . For example č is\n \\v{c}\n.