Æ


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. 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 æsc, "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.
File:Katholische-hofkirche AE.jpg|thumb|Æ on the Katholische Hofkirche in Dresden

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, 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 or, less commonly, an acute.
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 medieval is more commonly used than mediaeval in American English. Usage of the ae diphthong, however, may vary. For example medieval is now more common than mediaeval, even in the United Kingdom.

French

In the modern French alphabet, æ 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. 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
  • a rather open when directly followed by the sound, as in ræðast and frægari
  • in all other cases
One of its etymological origins is Old Norse é, which is particularly evident in the dialects of Suðuroy, where Æ is or :
  • æða : Southern, Northern Faroese
  • ætt : Southern, Northern Faroese
German and Swedish
The equivalent letter in German and Swedish is ä. In German this letter is after 'z' and in Swedish it is the second-to-last letter.
In the normalized spelling of Middle High German, æ represents a long vowel. The actual spelling in the manuscripts varies, however.
Danish and Norwegian
File:Denmark-gender.png|thumb|upright=0.9|West of the red line through Jutland, classic Danish dialects use æ as the definite article. Additionally the northernmost and southernmost of that area use Æ as the first person singular pronoun I. The two words are different vowels.
In Danish and Norwegian, æ is a separate letter of the alphabet and represents a monophthong. It follows z and precedes ø and å. In Norwegian there are four ways of pronouncing the letter:
  • as in æ, bær, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, læring, æra, Ænes, ærlig, tærne, Kværner, Bjørn Dæhlie, særs, ærfugl, lært, trær
  • as in færre, æsj, nærmere, Færder Lighthouse, Skjærvø, ærverdig, vært, lærd, Bræin
  • as in Sæther, Næser, Sæbø, gælisk, spælsau, bevæpne, sæd, æser, Hotel Cæsar, væte, trær
  • as in Sæth, Naess, Brænne, Kjell Bækkelund, Knut Vollebæk, væske, trædd
In many northern, western and southwestern Norwegian dialects such as Trøndersk and in the western Danish dialects of Thy and Southern Jutland, the word "I" is pronounced. Thus, when this word is written as it is pronounced in these dialects, it is often spelled with the letter "æ".
In western and southern Jutish dialects of Danish, æ is also the proclitic definite article: æ hus, as opposed to Standard Danish and all other Nordic varieties which have enclitic definite articles.

Ossetian

– which previously and later used a Cyrillic alphabet with an identical-looking letter – 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 the Kawésqar language, spoken in Chile and also in that of the Fuegian language Yaghan. In the orthographies of both languages, the letter represents. In Mochica, the exact sound value æ was used for is unknown, but is thought to be.

International Phonetic Alphabet

The symbol is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to denote a near-open front unrounded vowel such as 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 uses four additional æ-related symbols, see Unicode table below.

Unicode