Low Line

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The low line (also known as underline or underscore) originates from underlining used for emphasis.[1] Note that this diacritic can easily be confused with macron below and double macron below. The difference is that the low line should result in a single long line when used on several consecutive characters, while characters with macron below should have small gaps between the macrons.[2] The double macron below on the other hand has room for two characters above the line. There are no precomposed characters with low line.

Low Line in Unicode

Characters with Low Line
_ ◌̲
U+005F U+0332
Low Line Combining Low Line
Note: This is the underscore used in e.g. URLs.

Low Line in Natlangs

Uses of Low Line
Usage Language Letters Notes
Dental consonant Moro D̲d̲ /d̪/, T̲t̲ /t̪/ In the literature there appears a letter D̶d̶ which is not mentioned in the text. This probably stands for the same sound as D̲d̲, but the reason for why it is variously written with D̲d̲ and D̶d̶ is not explained.[3][4] The orthography for Moro did not have capital letters originally.[3]
Disambiguation in transliteration Amharic (BGN/PCGN 1967 transliteration) T̲s̲’̲ t̲s̲’̲ /tsʼ/ The Geʽez script has two types of characters that are pronounced /tsʼ/ in Amharic due to sounds mergers. These may be transliterated with Tsʼ tsʼ and T̲s̲’̲ t̲s̲’̲. The diacritic may also be dropped though.[5] It is unclear which diacritic, if any, is really supposed to be used. The aforementioned source uses underlining.
Retroflex consonant Pashto (BGN/PCGN 2007 romanization) S̲h̲ s̲h̲ /ʂ/, Z̲h̲ z̲h̲ /ʐ/ Unaccented Sh sh, Zh zh stand for /ʃ, ʒ/ respectively.[6] The BGN/PCGN 2007 romanization also uses the macron below with several letters, but for these digraphs low line has been specified, possibly because the connecting line emphasizes that these are digraphs.

Low Line in Conlangs

Uses of Low Line
Usage Language Creator Letters Notes

See Also

References

  1. Underline at Wikipedia.
  2. Macron below at Wikipedia.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Guest, Elizabeth. 1997. Moro Phonology.
  4. Blench, Roger. 2005. A dictionary of the Moro language of the Nuba hills, Sudan.
  5. Romanization of Amharic (PDF).
  6. BGN/PCGN National Romanization System for Afghanistan (PDF). See also Pashto phonology at Wikipedia.