Ě

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

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

• Dě, tě, ně [ɟɛ, cɛ, ɲɛ] is written instead of ďe, ťe, ňe (analogously to di, ti, ni).
• Bě, pě, vě, fě is written instead of bje, pje, vje, fje. But some words (vjezd, "entry, drive-in"; objem, "volume"), are written with bje, vje because –je- is part of the etymological root of the word, preceded by the prefix v- or ob-.
• Mě [mɲɛ] is written instead of mňe. For etymological reasons, mně is written in some words (jemný, "soft" -> jemně, "softly").

The grapheme is sometimes used in Croatian (as well as other Serbo-Croatian variants) to denote a jat (něsam, věra, lěpo, pověst, tělo). It is pronounced in different ways depending on the Shtokavian subdialect: 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 it was eventually dropped from the Gaj's Latin alphabet; it is only found 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.