A
caron or
háček (; from
Czech háček ) or
mäkčeň (; from
Slovak mäkčeň or ), also known as a
wedge,
inverted circumflex,
inverted hat, is a
diacritic ( ˇ ) placed over certain letters to indicate present or historical
palatalization,
iotation, or
postalveolar pronunciation in the orthography of some
Baltic,
Slavic,
Finnic,
Samic,
Berber and other languages. The caron also indicates the third
tone (falling and then rising) in the
Pinyin romanization of
Mandarin Chinese.