æ raising in North American English
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Æ (
lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the Letter (alphabet), letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain lang ...
: æ) is a character formed from the letters '' a'' and '' e'', originally a ligature representing the Latin
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
''ae''. It has been promoted to the full status of a letter in some languages, including
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. It was also used in
Old Swedish Old Swedish (Swedish language, Modern Swedish: ) is the name for two distinct stages of the Swedish language that were spoken in the Middle Ages: Early Old Swedish (), spoken from about 1225 until about 1375, and Late Old Swedish (), spoken fro ...
before being changed to ä. Today, the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
uses it to represent the "a" sound as in the English word ''cat''.
Diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
variants include Ǣ, ǣ, Ǽ, ǽ, Æ̀, æ̀, Æ̂, æ̂, Æ̃, and æ̃.More information may be found at their entries on Wiktionary ( ǣ, , etc.), and on the appendix page there entitled Variations of ''ae''. As a letter of the Old English Latin alphabet, it was called , "ash tree," after the Anglo-Saxon futhorc
rune Runes are the letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, a ...
which it transliterated; its traditional name in English is still ash, or æsh if the ligature is included.


Latin

In Classical Latin, the combination ''AE'' denotes the
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
, which had a value similar to the long ''i'' in ''fine'' as pronounced in most dialects of Modern English. Both classical and present practice is to write the letters separately, but the ligature was used in medieval and early modern writings, in part because ''æ'' was reduced to the simple vowel during the Roman Empire. In some medieval scripts, the ligature was simplified to ''ę'', an ''e'' with
ogonek The (; Polish: , "little tail", diminutive of ) is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European languages, and directly under a vowel in several Native American languages. It i ...
, called the ''
e caudata file:Sacrecon.png, 270px, Part of a Latin book published in Rome in 1632. ''E caudata'' is used in the words Sacrę, propagandę, prædictę, and grammaticę. The spelling grammaticæ, with ''æ'', is also used. The e caudata (, Latin for "tailed e ...
''. That was further simplified into a plain ''e'', which may have influenced or been influenced by the pronunciation change. However, the ligature is still relatively common in liturgical books and musical scores.


French

In the modern French alphabet, ''æ'' (called "''a e-dans-l’a''") is used to spell Latin and Greek borrowings like ''
curriculum vitæ In English, a curriculum vitae (,
'', '' et cætera'', '' ex æquo'', '' tænia'', and the first name Lætitia. It is mentioned in the name of
Serge Gainsbourg Serge Gainsbourg (; born Lucien Ginsburg; 2 April 1928 – 2 March 1991) was a French musician, singer-songwriter, actor, author and filmmaker. Regarded as one of the most important figures in French pop, he was renowned for often provoca ...
's song ''Elaeudanla Téïtéïa'', a reading of the
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
spelling of the name Lætitia: "L, A, E dans l'A, T, I, T, I, A."


English

In English, usage of the ligature varies between different places and contexts, but it is fairly rare. In modern typography, if technological limitations make the use of ''æ'' difficult (such as in use of typewriters, telegraphs, or ASCII), the digraph '' ae'' is often used instead. In the United States, the issue of the ligature is sidestepped in many cases by use of a simplified spelling with "e," as happened with œ as well. Usage, however, may vary; for example, ''medieval'' is now more common than ''mediaeval'' (and the now old-fashioned ''mediæval'') even in the United Kingdom, but ''archaeology'' is preferred over ''archeology'', even in the US. Given their long history, ligatures are sometimes used to show archaism or in literal quotations of historic sources; for instance, in those contexts, words such as ''dæmon'' and ''æther'' are often so spelled. The ligature is seen on gravestones of the 19th century, short for ''ætate'' ("at the age (of)"): "Æ ''xx''Ys, ''yy''Ms, ''zz''Ds." It is also common in formal typography (invitations, resolutions, announcements, and some government documents); for example, the
Court Circular The Court Circular (CC) is the official record that lists the engagements carried out by the monarch of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms; the Royal Family; and appointments to their staff and to the court. It is issued by St Ja ...
has continued to use the spelling ''orthopædic'' well into the 21st century. In numismatics, "Æ" is used as an abbreviation for "
bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such ...
,"David Sear. ''Greek Imperial Coins and Their Values.'' Spink Books, 1982. p. xxxv. derived from the Latin ''aes'' (''aere'' in the ablative, "from bronze"). In
Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, ''æ'' represented a sound between ''a'' and ''e'' (), very much like the short ''a'' of ''cat'' in many dialects of Modern English. If long vowels are distinguished from short vowels, the long version is marked with a macron (''ǣ'') or, less commonly, an
acute Acute may refer to: Science and technology * Acute angle ** Acute triangle ** Acute, a leaf shape in the glossary of leaf morphology * Acute (medicine), a disease that it is of short duration and of recent onset. ** Acute toxicity, the adverse eff ...
(''ǽ'').


Other Germanic languages

In Old Norse, ''æ'' represents the long vowel . The short version of the same vowel, , if it is distinguished from , is written as ''ę''. In most varieties of Faroese, ''æ'' is pronounced as follows: * when simultaneously stressed and occurring either word-finally, before a vowel letter, before a single consonant letter, or before the consonant-letter groups ''kl'', ''kr'', ''pl'', ''pr'', ''tr'', ''kj'', ''tj'', ''sj'', and those consisting of ''ð'' and one other consonant letter, except for ''ðr'' when pronounced like ''gr'' (except as below) * a rather open when directly followed by the sound , as in (silent ''ð'') and (silent ''g'') * in all other cases One of its etymological origins is Old Norse é (the other is Old Norse æ), which is particularly evident in the dialects of
Suðuroy Suðuroy (literally South Island, da, Suderø) is the southernmost of the Faroe Islands. The island covers 163.7 square kilometres (63.2 sq mi). In 2018 the population was 4,601. Suðuroy region (sýsla) comprises this island and Lítla ...
, where Æ is or : * ( eider): Southern , Northern Faroese * (family, direction): Southern , Northern Faroese In Icelandic, ''æ'' represents the
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
, which can be long or short. In
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
and Norwegian, ''æ'' is a separate letter of the alphabet that represents a monophthong. It follows '' z'' and precedes '' ø'' and '' å''. In Norwegian, there are four ways of pronouncing the letter: * as in (the name of the letter), , , , , , , , , , , , , ("trees") * as in , , , , , , , , (where is pronounced as a diphthong ) * as in , , , , , , , , , , ("thread(s)" erb * as in , , , , , , In many northern, western, and southwestern Norwegian dialects and in the western Danish dialects of and Southern Jutland, has a significant meaning: the first person singular pronoun I. It is thus a normal spoken word and is usually written when such dialects are rendered in writing. It is pronounced , contrary to the definite article which is pronounced . In western and southern Jutish dialects of Danish, is also the
proclitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a wo ...
definite article: (the house), as opposed to Standard Danish and all other Nordic varieties which have en
clitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a w ...
definite articles (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian: ; Icelandic, Faroese:
he house He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
. The equivalent letter in
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...
,
Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
, and Finnish is , but it is not located at the same place within the alphabet. In German, it is not a separate letter from "A" but in Swedish, it is the second-to-last letter (between å and ö). In the normalized spelling of Middle High German, represents a long vowel . The actual spelling in the manuscripts varies, however.


Ossetic

Ossetic used the letter ''æ'' when it was written using the Latin script from 1923 to 1938. Since then, Ossetian has used a Cyrillic alphabet with an identical-looking letter ( Ӕ and ӕ). It is pronounced as a mid-central vowel (
schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
).


South American languages

The letter ''æ'' is used in the official orthography of
Kawésqar The Kawésqar, also known as the Alacalufe, Kaweskar, Alacaluf or Halakwulup, are an indigenous people of South America, indigenous people who live in Chilean Patagonia, specifically in the Brunswick Peninsula, and Wellington Island, Wellington, ...
spoken in Chile and also in that of the Fuegian language
Yaghan Yaghan, Yagán or Yahgan may refer to: * Yahgan people, an ethnic group of Argentina and Chile * Yahgan language Yahgan or Yagán (also spelled Yaghan, Jagan, Iakan, and also known as Yámana, Háusi Kúta, or Yágankuta), is an extinct language ...
.


International Phonetic Alphabet

The symbol is also used in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
to denote a
near-open front unrounded vowel The near-open front unrounded vowel, or near-low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase of the ligature. Bot ...
like in the word ''cat'' in many dialects of Modern English, which is the sound that was most likely represented by the Old English letter. In the IPA, it is always in
lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the Letter (alphabet), letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain lang ...
.


Uralic Phonetic Alphabet

The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) uses several additional æ-related symbols: * * * *


Computer encodings and entering

* When using the Latin-1 or Unicode/ HTML character sets, the code points for ''Æ'' and ''æ'' are and , respectively. * The characters can be entered by holding the Alt key while typing in 0198 (upper case) or 0230 (lower case) on the number pad on Windows systems (the Alt key and 145 for æ or 146 for Æ may also work from the legacy
IBM437 Code page 437 ( CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer). It is also known as CP437, OEM-US, OEM 437, PC-8, or DOS Latin US. The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (dia ...
codepage). * In the TeX typesetting system, ''ӕ'' is produced by \ae. * In Microsoft Word, ''Æ'' or ''æ'' can be written using the key combination + + followed by or . * On
US-International QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden t ...
keyboards, Æ is accessible with the combination of AltGr+z. * In X, AltGr+A is often mapped to æ/Æ, or a
Compose key A compose key (sometimes called multi key) is a key on a computer keyboard that indicates that the following (usually 2 or more) keystrokes trigger the insertion of an alternate character, typically a precomposed character or a symbol. For insta ...
sequence Compose + a + e can be used. For more information, see Unicode input. * In all versions of the Mac OS (Systems 1 through 7, Mac OS 8 and 9, and the current OS X), the following key combinations are used: æ: Option + ' (apostrophe key), Æ: Option + Shift + '. * On the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, as well as phones running Google's Android OS or Windows Mobile OS and on the Kindle Touch and Paperwhite, æ and Æ are accessed by holding down "A" until a small menu is displayed. * The Icelandic keyboard layout has a separate key for Æ (and Ð, Þ and Ö). * The Norwegian keyboard layout also has a separate key for Æ, rightmost of the letters, to the right of Ø and below Å.


Cyrillic

The Latin letters are frequently used in place of the
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
Ӕ and ӕ in Cyrillic texts (such as on Ossetian sites on the Internet).


See also

*
Æ (Cyrillic) Æ (lowercase: æ) is a character formed from the letters '' a'' and '' e'', originally a ligature representing the Latin diphthong ''ae''. It has been promoted to the status of a letter in some languages, including Danish, Norwegian, Ice ...
*
Ae (digraph) This is a list of Digraph (orthography), digraphs used in various Latin alphabets. Capitalisation involves only the first letter (''ch'' becomes ''Ch'') unless otherwise stated (''ij'' becomes ''IJ''). Letters with diacritics are arranged in alp ...
* Å * Ä * Ę * Ø * Ö * Œ *
Near-open front unrounded vowel The near-open front unrounded vowel, or near-low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase of the ligature. Bot ...
(represented by æ in the IPA) * Ə *
Ansuz rune Ansuz is the conventional name given to the ''a''-rune of the Elder Futhark, . The name is based on Proto-Germanic ''*ansuz'', denoting a deity belonging to the principal pantheon in Germanic paganism. The shape of the rune is likely from Neo ...
*
List of words that may be spelled with a ligature This list of words that may be spelled with a ligature in English encompasses words which have letters that may, in modern usage, either be rendered as two distinct letters or as a single, combined letter. This includes ''AE'' being rendered as '' ...
*
Anavae Anavae (often abbreviated ae, Æ or æ) are an English-rock duo from London, England. The group consists of Rebecca Need-Menear and Jamie Finch. Following their self-released EP ''Into the Aether'', the band signed with English indie label LA ...
* Aespa


Footnotes


Notes


References


External links

* Robert Bringhurst (2002). ''
The Elements of Typographic Style ''The Elements of Typographic Style'' is a book on typography and style by Canadian typographer, poet and translator Robert Bringhurst. Originally published in 1992 by Hartley & Marks Publishers, it was revised in 1996, 2001 (v2.4), 2002 (v2.5), ...
'', page 271. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ae Latin-script ligatures Phonetic transcription symbols E E E E E Old English language Vowel letters Latin-script letters