◌̄

Description
A horizontal line, called a , to be placed above other characters.

Pronunciation

 * as :
 * as :

Diacritical mark

 * 1)  Used to indicate vowel length.
 * 2)  Used to indicate mid tone.
 * 3)  Used to indicate retraction of a letter that has a descender – see ⟨◌̠⟩.
 * 4)  a level tone, or, in contrast to low $⟨◌̱⟩$, a high level tone.
 * 5)  Used to denote an X-bar.

Synonyms

 * [1]:
 * [2]:

Usage notes

 * $⟨ḡ⟩$ is used for the digraph oo.
 * $⟨ġ⟩$ is used for a short vowel/syllable.

Usage notes
In a number of romanization systems of Japanese, particularly Hepburn, the macron indicates that a vowel is a long vowel.

Other romanization systems, particularly Kunrei-shiki, use the circumflex (^) for that purpose.

Usage notes

 * Used to mark long vowels: ā = [aː], ē = [ɛː] or [æː], ī = [iː], ū = [uː].
 * For a short while (1908–1919), it was also used with the letter o (ō) to mark long [oː] in words of foreign origin, but this usage has since then been abandoned.
 * Letters with macrons are considered as separate letters with different names, and listed in the alphabet after the same letters without macron (i.e., ā after a, ē after e, ī after i, and ū after u). In actual practice, however, letters with and without macrons are treated as the same letter in alphabetized lists (e.g., in dictionaries), unlike letters with cedillas (ģ, ķ, ļ, ņ) or háčeks (č, š, ž), which are kept separate in alphabetized lists.

Diacritical mark

 * 1)  Indicates the high level first tone.