Caron

A caron ( ˇ ) or haček (from Czech: háček), is a diacritic. This is a special symbol that is written over some letters to show that they are pronounced differently. Some other names for the caron are: wedge, inverted circumflex, and inverted hat.

ˇ
Caron
Diacritics in Latin & Greek accent acute( ´ ) double acute( ˝ ) grave( ` ) double grave(  ̏ ) circumflex( ˆ ) caron, háček( ˇ ) breve( ˘ ) inverted breve(   ̑  ) cedilla( ¸ ) diaeresis, umlaut( ¨ ) dot( · ) palatal hook(   ̡ ) retroflex hook(   ̢ ) hook above, dấu hỏi(  ̉ ) horn(  ̛ ) iota subscript(  ͅ ) macron( ˉ ) ogonek, nosinė( ˛ ) perispomene(  ͂ ) overring( ˚ ) underring( ˳ ) rough breathing( ῾ ) smooth breathing( ᾿ ) Marks sometimes used as diacritics apostrophe( ’ ) bar( ◌̸ ) colon( : ) comma( , ) period( . ) hyphen( ˗ ) prime( ′ ) tilde( ~ ) Diacritical marks in other scripts Arabic diacritics Early Cyrillic diacritics kamora(  ҄ ) pokrytie(  ҇ ) titlo(  ҃ ) Gurmukhī diacritics Hebrew diacritics Indic diacritics anusvara( ं ং ം ) chandrabindu( ँ ఁ ) nukta( ़ ) virama( ् ് ్ ් ್ ) visarga( ः ঃ ) IPA diacritics Japanese diacritics dakuten( ﾞ ) handakuten( ﾟ ) Khmer diacritics Syriac diacritics Thai diacritics Related Dotted circle◌ Punctuation marks Logic symbols
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The caron is used in Baltic, Slavic and Finno-Lappic languages to show that a letter is pronounced differently than normal. Sometimes the caron is drawn over a letter to show that it used to be pronounced differently. Usually the caron shows:

• palatalization, a softer pronunciation
• iotation, a y sound before a vowel
• postalveolar consonant, letter sounds made with the tongue touching the back of the alveolar ridge in the mouth

The caron looks like an upside-down circumflex ( ˆ ). It looks a lot like the breve symbol, but is more pointed at the bottom. It is also used as a symbol in mathematics.