æ Tensing

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, Icelandic, and Faroese. It was also used in both Old Swedish, before being replaced by ä, and Old English, where it was eventually dropped entirely in favour of a. The modern International Phonetic Alphabet uses it to represent the near-open front unrounded vowel (the sound represented by the 'a' in English words like ''cat''). Diacritic variants include Ǣ/ǣ, Ǽ/ǽ, Æ̀/æ̀, Æ̂/æ̂ and Æ̃/æ̃.

As a letter of the Old English Latin alphabet, it was called , " ash tree", after the Anglo-Saxon futhorc rune ᚫ which it transliterated; its traditional name in English is still ash, or æsh () if the ligature is included.

Languages

English

In English, use 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 Old English, ''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 (''ǽ'').

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; thus, ''archeology'' is more commonly used than ''archaeology'' in American English. Usage of the ''ae'' diphthong, however, may vary. For example, ''medieval'' is now more common than ''mediaeval'' (and the now old-fashioned ''mediæval''), even in the United Kingdom.

French

In the modern French alphabet, ''æ'' (called , 'e in the a') is used to spell Latin and Greek borrowings like '' curriculum vitæ'', '' et cætera'', '' ex æquo'', '' tænia'', and the first name Lætitia. It is mentioned in the name of Serge Gainsbourg's song ''Elaeudanla Téïtéïa'', a reading of the French spelling of the name Lætitia: "L, A, E dans l'A, T, I, T, I, A."

Latin

In Classical Latin, the combination ''AE'' denotes the diphthong , 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, called 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.

Other Germanic languages

Old Norse

In Old Norse, ''æ'' represents the long vowel . The short version of the same vowel, , if it is distinguished from , is written as ''ę''.

Icelandic

In Icelandic, ''æ'' represents the diphthong , which can be long or short.

Faroese

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, where Æ is or :
* ( eider): Southern , Northern Faroese
* (family, direction): Southern , Northern Faroese

German and Swedish

The equivalent letter in German and Swedish 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.

Danish and Norwegian

In Danish 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 such as Trøndersk and in the western Danish dialects of and Southern Jutland, the word "I" (Standard Danish: , Bokmål Norwegian: , Nynorsk Norwegian: ) is pronounced . Thus, when this word is written as it is pronounced in these dialects (rather than the standard), it is often spelled with the letter "æ".

In western and southern Jutish dialects of Danish, is also the proclitic definite article: (the house), as opposed to Standard Danish and all other Nordic varieties which have enclitic definite articles (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian: ; Icelandic, Faroese: he house.

Ossetian

Ossetian – which previously and later used a Cyrillic alphabet with an identical-looking letter ( Ӕ and ӕ) – was written using the Latin script from 1923 to 1938, and included this character. It is pronounced as a near-open central vowel .

South American languages

The letter ''Æ'' is used in the official orthography of Kawésqar spoken in Chile and also in that of the Fuegian language Yaghan.

International Phonetic Alphabet

The symbol is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to denote a near-open front unrounded vowel 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. is a superscript IPA letter.

Uralic Phonetic Alphabet

The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) uses four additional æ-related symbols, see Unicode table below.

Unicode

See also

Footnotes

Notes

References

Further reading

* Robert Bringhurst (2002). '' The Elements of Typographic Style''. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks. . p. 271.

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ae
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Latin-script letters
Latin-script ligatures
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Old English
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Phonetic transcription symbols
Vowel letters