Extended Cyrillic breve form?

John Hudson

I'm looking at a number of extended Cyrillic diacritic letters, i.e. characters used for non-Slavic languages, and am wondering about the appropriate/preferred style of the breve mark in these glyphs. The characters in question are

04C1 Ӂ CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZHE WITH BREVE
04C2 ӂ CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ZHE WITH BREVE
04D0 Ӑ CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER A WITH BREVE
04D1 ӑ CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A WITH BREVE
04D6 Ӗ CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IE WITH BREVE
04D7 ӗ CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IE WITH BREVE

The form of breve sign used for the Slavic characters

0419 Й CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHORT I
0439 й CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHORT I
040E Ў CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHORT U
045E ў CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHORT U

is conventionally larger than the Latin breve, and stylistically quite different in serif types. I am wondering whether it is appropriate to carry this convention across the extended Cyrillic diacritic characters, i.e. to have a single Cyrillic-specific breve form, or if any of the language communities using these characters have a preference for a breve that follows the Latin model? Anyone have any information?

Fig. Typical stylistic difference between Latin (left) and Cyrillic (right) breve forms in serif type:

Denis Moyogo Jacquerye

http://paratype.com/help/language/language1.asp?langCode=118 also gives Ы̆ ы̆ used in the Mari language.

https://loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/nonslav.pdf gives О̆ о̆, Ы̆ ы̆, Э̆ э̆ in Mordvin (Moksha dialect) in the 1923 orthography, but no Ы̆ ы̆ in Mari.

http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/TN-suomi_2011.pdf gives a few used in Tundra Nenets: Ӑ ӑ, Я̆ я̆ but this might be specific to some usage since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tundra_Nenets_language mentions a different set: Ӑ ӑ, Ӗ ӗ.

There’s also Ҋ ҋ in Kildin Sami.

John Hudson

Thanks, Denis. Yes, I am aware of additional breve letters in various Cyrillic orthographies, and my question regarding appropriate form of the mark would apply to any and all of those. In the present instance, my client is only concerned with languages using the six diacritics I identified.

Olexa Volochay

In all these Cyrillic letters are derived from Й. Accordingly, it is necessary to use the Cyrillic breve (kratka).

Samuil Simonov

Please do not mix different breves in Cyrillic texts, all of them should be of the Cyrillic type.
Even if someone writes /ka-cy U+0306 or /yu-cy U+0306, your font should sub the form of this combinig breve to the Cyrillic one.

Denis Moyogo Jacquerye

I’d assume the same. Й is used along with Ӂ in Gagauz (Cyrillic); Ӗ and О̆ in Tundra Nenets; Ӑ, О̆ and Ў in Itelmen; Ӑ and Ӗ in Chuvash; Ӑ and sometimes О̆ and Ө̆ in Khanti; etc. So it makes sense for them to use the same kratka shape instead of breve.

In practice this might be different, for example in the Tundra Nenets document I referred to earlier http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/TN-suomi_2011.pdf where the Ӑ and Я̆ don’t have a kratka-shape. I think I’ve also seen phonetic transcriptions in an extended Cyrillic where the breve-shape is used. But I don’t know if either is on purpose.

Kent Lew

Also, it may still be common to find Chuvash using Latin ă ĕ (and ç) chars in place of properly encoded Cyrillic forms, perhaps due to legacy habits. I would expect that, in any example where one finds mismatched breve forms intermixed, the differences are more likely due to limitations rather than any normative or culturally preferred difference.

Olexa Volochay

Using of Latin breve due to the fact that the number of fonts with the extended Cyrillic encoding is very limited. And not to spend money on font revision, use similar Latin characters.
See for references free ParaType fonts PT Sans and PT Serif - special designed (government order!) for cyrillic based alphabets in Russia.

John Hudson

Thanks. Olexa and Samuil. I guessed this would probably be the case, but appreciate the feedback.