Ě

The grapheme Ě, ě (E with caron) is used in the Czech, the Sorbian alphabets, in Pinyin, in Indonesian, in Javanese, in Sundanese and in Proto-Slavic notation.

The letter ě is a vestige of Old-Czech palatalization. The originally-palatalizing phoneme, yat /ě/ [ʲɛ], became extinct and changed to [ɛ] or [jɛ], but it is preserved as a grapheme.

The letter never appears in the initial position, and its pronunciation depends on the preceding consonant:

The grapheme is sometimes used in Serbo-Croatian to denote a jat (něsam, věra, lěpo, pověst, tělo). It is pronounced in different ways depending on the dialect: Ekavian (nesam, vera, lepo, povest, telo), Ikavian (nisam, vira, lipo, povist, tilo) or Ijekavian (nijesam, vjera, lijepo, povijest, tijelo). Historically its use was very widespread, but it gradually lost favour to combined j and e graphemes and was eventually dropped from the Gaj's Latin alphabet. It is found only in scientific and historically-accurate literature.

Pinyin uses this ě (e caron), not the e breve (ĕ), to indicate the third tone of Mandarin Chinese.

Tâi-Lô use ě to indicate the sixth tone of Southern Min (Taiwanese).

Indonesian uses ě (e caron), to indicate pěpět (schwa) ⟨ə⟩ as well as Javanese and Sundanese.

Javanese uses ě (e caron), to indicate pěpět (schwa) ⟨ə⟩.