"
Ä" and "
ä" are both characters that represent either a letter from several extended
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
s, or the letter
AA is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :...
with an
umlaut mark or diaeresisThe diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï....
.
Independent letter
The letter
Ä occurs in the
SwedishModern Swedish is written with a 29-letter Latin alphabet:Prior to the 13th edition of Svenska Akademiens ordlista in 2006, the letters and were collated together....
,
FinnishThe Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin script, and especially the Swedish alphabet. Officially it comprises 28 letters:A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y, Z, Å, Ä, Ö...
,
Skolt SamiSkolt Sami is a Uralic, Sami language spoken by approximately 400 speakers in Finland, mainly in Sevettijärvi, and approximately 20–30 speakers of the Njuõˊttjäuˊrr dialect in an area surrounding Lake Lovozero in Russia. Skolt Sami used to also be spoken on the Neiden area of Norway,...
,
EstonianThe Estonian alphabet is used for writing the Estonian language and is based on the Latin alphabet, with German influence. As such, the Estonian alphabet has the letters Ä, Ö, and Ü , which represent the vowel sounds , and , respectively...
,
LuxembourgishLuxembourgish is a High German language spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 320,000 people worldwide speak Luxembourgish.-Language family:...
, North Frisian, Saterlandic,
Emiliano-RomagnoloEmiliano-Romagnolo is a Romance language mostly spoken in Emilia-Romagna, Italy and San Marino. It belongs to the Northern Italian group within Romance languages , which is included in the wider group of western Romance languages...
,
RotumanRotuman, also referred to as Rotunan, Rutuman or Fäeag Rotuma, is an Austronesian language spoken by the indigenous people of the South Pacific island group of Rotuma, an island with a Polynesian-influenced culture that was incorporated as a dependency into the Colony of Fiji in 1881...
,
SlovakThe Slovak alphabet uses a modification of the Latin alphabet. The modifications include the four diacriticals placed above certain letters. Therefore the Slovak alphabet has 46 graphemes.- Vowels :- Consonants :Notes...
and
TurkmenThe current official Turkmen alphabet as used in Turkmenistan is a Latin alphabet based on the Turkish alphabet, but with notable differences: J is used instead of the Turkish C; Ž is used instead of the Turkish J; Y is used instead of the dotless i ; Ý is used instead of the Turkish consonantal Y;...
alphabets, where it represents a vowel sound. In Finnish and Turkmen this is always [æ]; in Swedish and Estonian regional variation, as well as the letter's position in a word, allows for either [æ] and [ɛ]. In Slovak
Ä stands for [ɛ] (or a bit archaic but still correct [æ]).
In the
Nordic countriesThe Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland...
, the vowel sound [æ] was originally written as "
ÆÆ 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...
" when Christianisation caused the former Vikings to replace the
Runic alphabetThe runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages before the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter...
with the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
around 1100 AD. The letter Ä arose in German and later in Swedish from originally writing the E in AE on top of the A, which with time became simplified as two dots. In the
IcelandicThe modern Icelandic alphabet consists of the following 32 letters:It is a Latin alphabet with diacritics, in addition it includes the character eth Ðð and the runic letter thorn Þþ...
,
FaroeseThe Faroese alphabet consists of 29 letters derived from the Latin alphabet:- See also :* Alphabets derived from the Latin* Icelandic alphabet* Faroese language* Faroese orthography* Danish and Norwegian alphabet...
, Danish and Norwegian alphabets, "
ÆÆ 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...
" is still used instead of Ä.
Finnish later adopted the Swedish alphabet during the 500 years that Finland was part of Sweden. Although the phenomenon of
Germanic umlautIn linguistics, umlaut is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a following vowel or semivowel. The term umlaut was originally coined and is used principally in connection with the study of the Germanic languages...
does not exist in Finnish, the phoneme [æ] does. Estonian similarly gained the letter via Germanic influence.
Cyrillic
Ä is used in some alphabets invented in the 19th century which are based on the
Cyrillic alphabetThe Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
. These include
MariThe Mari language , spoken by more than 600,000 people, belongs to the Uralic language family. It is spoken primarily in the Mari Republic of the Russian Federation as well as in the area along the Vyatka river basin and eastwards to the Urals...
,
AltayAltay is a language of the Turkic group of languages. It is an official language of Altai Republic, Russia. The language was called Oyrot prior to 1948. There were ca...
and the Keräşen
Tatar alphabetTwo scripts are currently used for the Tatar language: Cyrillic and Latin.-Introduction:While a Tatar version of the Latin alphabet called Jaŋalif had been in use during the 1930s, there is controversy in the matter of Latin-based Tatar alphabet for İdel-Ural Tatar. One dimension of the...
.
A-umlaut
A similar glyph,
A with
umlautThe diaeresis and the umlaut are diacritics that consist of two dots placed over a letter, most commonly a vowel. When that letter is an i or a j, the diacritic replaces the tittle: ï....
, appears in the
German alphabetThe modern German alphabet is an extended Latin alphabet consisting of 30 letters – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet plus four extra letters.In German, the individual letters have neuter gender: das A, das B etc....
. It represents the umlauted form of
a, resulting in ɛ or [e] (for some speakers only). However, it is called "Ä" or "Umlaut-A", not "A Umlaut". With respect to diphthongs, Ä behaves as an E, e.g.
Bäume /bɔɪmə/ (Engl.: trees). In German dictionaries, the letter is
collatedCollation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetization, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...
together with
A, while in German phonebooks the letter is collated as
AE. The letter also occurs in some languages which have adopted German names or spellings, but is not a part of these languages' alphabets. It is commonly found in Ulster-Scots writing.
The letter was originally an A with a lowercase e on top, which was later stylized to two dots.
In other languages that do not have the letter as part of the regular alphabet or in limited character sets such as
US-ASCIIThe American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
, Ä is frequently replaced with the two-letter combination "Ae". This is also true for
swiss germanSwiss Standard German, referred to by the Swiss as Schriftdeutsch, or Hochdeutsch, is one of four official languages in Switzerland, besides French, Italian and Romansh...
where the upper-case "Ä" does not exist, whereas the lower-case "ä" does. The reason for this likely lies in
german swiss typewriters layoutthumb|175px|A computer QWERTZ keyboardThe QWERTZ or QWERTZU keyboard is a widely used computer and typewriter keyboard layout that is mostly used in Central Europe...
having no upper-case version of the character, producing the lower case "
àis a letter of the Catalan, French, Galician, Italian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic and Vietnamese languages, consisting of the Latin letter A and a grave accent. À is also used in Pinyin transliteration. In most languages, it represents the vowel a. This letter is also a letter in Taos.When...
" instead.
Phonetic alphabets
- In the International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
, ä represents an open central unrounded vowelThe open central unrounded vowel, or low central unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in many spoken languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet officially has no dedicated letter for this sound between front and back...
(in distinction to an open front unrounded vowel).
- in the Rheinische Dokumenta
The Rheinische Dokumenta is a phonetic writing system developed in the early 1980s by a working group of academics, linguists, local language experts, and local language speakers of the Rhineland....
, a phonetic alphabet for many West Central GermanWest Central German belongs to the Central, High German dialect family in the German language. Its dialects are thoroughly Franconian including the following sub-families:* Central Franconian...
, the Low Rhenish, and few related languages, "ä" represents the sound ɛ.
Typography
Historically A-diaeresis was written as an
A with two dots above the letter. A-umlaut was written as an
A with a small
e written above: this minute
e degenerated to two vertical bars in medieval
handwritingHandwriting is a person's particular & individual style of writing with pen or pencil, which contrasts with "Hand" which is an impersonal and formalised writing style in several historical varieties...
s. In most later handwritings these bars in turn nearly became dots.
ÆÆ 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...
, a highly similar ligature evolving from the same origin as
Ä, evolved in the
IcelandicThe modern Icelandic alphabet consists of the following 32 letters:It is a Latin alphabet with diacritics, in addition it includes the character eth Ðð and the runic letter thorn Þþ...
, Danish and Norwegian
alphabetAn alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
s. The Æ ligature was also common in
Old EnglishOld English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
, but had largely disappeared in
Middle EnglishMiddle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
.
In modern
typographyTypography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
there was insufficient space on
typewriterA typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
s and later
computer keyboardIn computing, a keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches...
s to allow for both A-diaeresis (also representing
Ä) and A-umlaut. Since they looked near-identical the two glyphs were combined, which was also done in computer
character encodingA character encoding system consists of a code that pairs each character from a given repertoire with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the transmission of data through telecommunication networks or storage of text in...
s such as ISO 8859-1. As a result there was no way to differentiate between the different characters.
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
theoretically provides a solution, but recommends it only for highly specialized applications.
Ä is also used to represent the ə (the
schwaIn linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
sign) in situations where the glyph is unavailable, as used in the
TatarThe Tatar language , or more specifically Kazan Tatar, is a Turkic language spoken by the Tatars of historical Kazan Khanate, including modern Tatarstan and Bashkiria...
and Azeri languages.
TurkmenTurkmen is the national language of Turkmenistan...
started to use Ä officially instead of schwa.
The HTML entity for Ä is Ä or Ä. For ä, it is ä (mnemonic for "A umlaut") or ä.
The
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
code point for ä is U+00E4. Ä is U+00C4.
The
Windows-1252Windows-1252 or CP-1252 is a character encoding of the Latin alphabet, used by default in the legacy components of Microsoft Windows in English and some other Western languages. It is one version within the group of Windows code pages...
code for ä is 228, for Ä 196. In
MS-DOSIBM PC or MS-DOS code page 437 is the character set of the original IBM PC. It is also known as CP 437, OEM 437, PC-8, MS-DOS Latin US or sometimes misleadingly referred to as the OEM font, High ASCII or Extended ASCII....
, ä is 132, and Ä is 142.
External links