А (А а; italics: ''А а'') is a letter of the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...

. It commonly represents an

open central unrounded vowel The open central unrounded vowel, or low central unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in many spoken languages. While the International Phonetic Alphabet officially has no dedicated letter for this sound between front and back , it ...

, halfway between the pronunciation of in "cat" and "father". The Cyrillic letter А is romanized using the Latin letter A.

History

The Cyrillic letter А was derived directly from the Greek letter Alpha (). In the

Early Cyrillic alphabet The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Slavic people living ...

its name was (azǔ), meaning "I". In the Cyrillic numeral system, the Cyrillic letter А has a value of 1.

Form

Throughout history, the Cyrillic letter А has had various shapes, but today is standardised on one that looks exactly like the Latin letter A, including the italic and lower case forms.

Usage

In most languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet – such as Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Belarusian,

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

, Rusyn, Serbian, Macedonian and Montenegrin – the Cyrillic letter А represents the

. In Ingush and Chechen the Cyrillic letter А represents both the open back unrounded vowel and the mid-central vowel . In Tuvan the letter can be written as a

double vowel A double is a look-alike or doppelgänger; one person or being that resembles another. Double, The Double or Dubble may also refer to: Film and television * Double (filmmaking), someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character * ...

Related letters and other similar characters

*A a : Latin letter A *Á á : Latin letter Á *Α α : Greek letter Alpha *Ă ă : Latin letter A with Breve *Â â : Latin letter A with Circumflex *Ā ā : Latin letter A with Macron *Æ æ : Latin letter Æ

Computing codes

References

External links

* * {{Authority control Vowel letters