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.