Ě

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Ě" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The grapheme Ě, ě (E with caron) is used in the Czech, the Sorbian alphabets, in Pinyin, in Indonesian, in Javanese, in Sundanese and in Proto-Slavic notation.

The letter ě is a vestige of Old-Czech palatalization. The originally-palatalizing phoneme, yat /ě/ [ʲɛ], became extinct and changed to [ɛ] or [jɛ], but it is preserved as a grapheme.

The 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. Nevertheless, some words (vjezd, "entry, drive-in"; objem, "volume") are written with bje, vje 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").

The grapheme is sometimes used in Serbo-Croatian to denote a jat (něsam, věra, lěpo, pověst, tělo). It is pronounced in different ways depending on the dialect: Ekavian (nesam, vera, lepo, povest, telo), Ikavian (nisam, vira, lipo, povist, tilo) or Ijekavian (nijesam, vjera, lijepo, povijest, tijelo). Historically its use was very widespread, but it gradually lost favour to combined j and e graphemes and was eventually dropped from the Gaj's Latin alphabet. It is found only in scientific and historically-accurate literature.

Pinyin uses this ě (e caron), not the e breve (ĕ), to indicate the third tone of Mandarin Chinese.

Indonesian uses ě (e caron), to indicate pěpět (schwa) ⟨ə⟩ as well as Javanese and Sundanese.

Javanese uses ě (e caron), to indicate pěpět (schwa) ⟨ə⟩.

Like in Javanese, ě (e caron) in Sundanese also indicates pěpět (schwa) ⟨ə⟩.

^[1]

• 
  Náměstí Míru Prague Metro station

This article related to the Latin script is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e