Macron (diacritic)

Okay kiddo, have you ever seen a letter with a little squiggly line above it like this: ā? That squiggly line is called a macron. It's like a little hat that goes on a letter to tell you how to say it.

Let's take the letter A for example. Sometimes the letter A can make the sound "aaaaa" like in the word "apple", and sometimes it can make the sound "ay" like in the word "ape". With a macron over the A, it tells us to say "ay" instead of "aaaaa". So in the word "āpe", we say it like "ay-pe".

Macrons are used in some languages, like Hawaiian or Maori, to change the meaning of a word. For example, in Hawaiian, the word "kalo" means "taro", a type of root vegetable, but the word "kālo" means "to sow". Without the macron, it could be a little confusing!

So I hope that helps you understand what a macron is! It's just a little line that helps us know how to say words correctly.