hacek

Háček, also called caron in some contexts, is a diacritic mark shaped like a small inverted breve (ˇ) placed above certain letters in various Latin-based orthographies. The term háček is Czech for “little hook,” reflecting the mark’s hooked appearance. It serves to modify the base letter’s pronunciation rather than to form a new letter on its own, commonly signaling softening, palatalization, or a historical sound change.

The háček is widely used in Central and Southeast European languages, including Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Croatian, and Serbian. Letters commonly written with a háček include č, š, and ž, which represent ch, sh, and zh sounds in many languages. Other letters with a háček appear in different orthographies, such as ř in Czech (a distinct rhotic), ň and ď in Czech and Slovak, and ľ, ť, or ě in various systems. The diacritic can also appear on vowels, as in ě in Czech, to indicate a specific vowel quality or historical pronunciation.

Typography and encoding: In Unicode, the háček can be represented as a combining diacritic (combining caron U+030C) placed above a base letter, or via precomposed characters such as Č U+010C, č U+010D, Š U+0160, š U+0161, Ž U+017D, ž U+017E, and others. In linguistic literature, the mark is often referred to as the caron, while in the orthographies of several languages it is known as háček.

See also: Caron, diacritic marks, Slavic alphabets.