Æ (lower case: æ) is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. Originally a ligature representing a Latin diphthong, it has been promoted to the full status of a letter in the alphabets of some languages, including Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Icelandic. 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 (IPA: /æʃ/).
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In English, usage of the ligature varies in different places. In modern typography, and where technological limitations make its use difficult (such as in use of typewriters), æ is often eschewed in favor of the digraph ae. This is often considered incorrect especially when rendering foreign words where æ is considered a letter (e.g. Æsir, Ærø) or brand names which make use of the ligature (e.g. Æon Flux, Encyclopædia Britannica). In the United States, the problem of the ligature is sidestepped in many cases by use of a simplified spelling with "e"; compare the common usage, medieval, with the traditional mediæval. However, given the long history of such spellings, they are sometimes used to invoke archaism or in literal quotations of historic sources; for instance, words such as dæmon are often treated in this way. Often, it will be replaced with the digraph as in archaeology.
In Classical Latin, the combination AE denotes the diphthong [ai̯], 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 [ɛ] in the imperial period. In some medieval scripts, the ligature was simplified to ę, small letter e with ogonek, the e caudata. This form 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.
The Latin diphthong appeared both in native words (where it was spelled with ai before the 2nd century BC) and in borrowings from Greek words having the diphthong αι (alpha iota).
In the modern French alphabet, æ is used to spell Latin and Greek borrowings like tænia and ex æquo.
In Old English, æ denotes a sound intermediate between a and e (IPA: [æ]), a sound very much like the short a of cat in many dialects of modern English.
In most varieties of Faroese, æ is pronounced as follows:
One of its etymological origins is Old Norse é (the other is Old Norse æ), and this is particularly evident in the dialects of Suðuroy, where Æ is IPA: [eː] or [ɛ]:
In Icelandic, æ signifies the diphthong [ai].
In Danish and Norwegian, æ represents monophthongal vowel phonemes. In Norwegian, there are four ways of pronouncing the letter:
In many western, northern, and southwestern Norwegian dialects, and in the western Danish dialects of Thy and South Jutland, the phoneme Æ [ɛ] has a significant meaning: the first person singular pronoun I, and it is thus a normally spoken word; usually, it is written as Æ when these dialects are rendered in writing. In Faroese, it is pronounced the same way, but it is written as eg.
In western and southern Jutish dialects of Danish, æ /æ/ is also the proclitic definite article: 'æ hus' (the house), as opposed to Standard Danish and all other Scandinavian dialects which have enclitic definite articles (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian: huset, Icelandic: húsið (the house)). These dialects are rarely committed to writing but some dialect literature exists.
More off-standard, some Norwegian dialects may also render er (the present tense of the verb være, to be) as æ in writing.
The Danish and Norwegian 'Ӕ' is equivalent to the letter 'Ä' in the Swedish and Finnish alphabets and languages.
The Ossetic language used the letter æ when it was written using the Latin script (1923–38). Since then, Ossetian has used a Cyrillic alphabet with an identical-looking letter (Ӕ and ӕ). It is pronounced like a in the English word cat.
The letter æ is used in the official orthography of Kawésqar spoken in Chile and also in that of the Fuegian language Yaghan.
The symbol [æ] is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to denote a near-open front unrounded vowel like in the word cat in many dialects of modern English: this is the sound most likely represented by the Old English letter. In this context, it is always in lowercase.
Æ Æ) and U+00E6 æ latin small letter ae (230decimal, HTML: æ æ), respectively.Ӕ ) and U+04D5 ӕ cyrillic small ligature a ie (1237decimal, HTML: ӕ ); note the name being A IE), though in practice the Latin letters Æ and æ (U+00C6, U+00E6) are used in Cyrillic texts (such as on Ossetian sites on the Internet).| Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp | Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz | ||
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