The letter
A is the first letter in the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...
. Its name in
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
is spelled
a; the plural is
aes, though this is rare.
The letter A can be traced to a
pictogramA pictograph is an ideogram that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Earliest examples of pictographs include ancient or prehistoric drawings or paintings found on rock walls...
of an
oxAn ox is a bovine animal trained as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly adult, castrated male cattle, but cows or bulls may also be used in some areas...
head in Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet.
Circa 1600 B.C. the
Phoenician alphabetThe Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BCE. Unlike its Canaanite predecessor, the Phoenician alphabet was non-pictorial. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization...
's letter had a linear form that served as the base for some later forms. Its name must have corresponded closely to the
HebrewThe Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, and because of its place of origin, the Assyrian script is the better-known of two script standards used to write the...
aleph* Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...
.
When the
Ancient GreeksAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
adopted the alphabet, they had no use for the
glottal stopThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English the feature is represented for example by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those attempting an authentic pronunciation of...
that the letter had denoted in
PhoenicianPhoenician was a language originally spoken in the coastal region then called "Pūt" in Ancient Egyptian, "Canaan" in Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic, and "Phoenicia" in Greek and Latin. Phoenician is a Semitic language of the Canaanite subgroup; its closest living relative is Hebrew...
and other
Semitic languagesThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
, so they used the sign for the vowel , and kept its name with a minor change (
alphaAlpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 1. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Aleph...
).
The letter
A is the first letter in the
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...
. Its name in
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
is spelled
a; the plural is
aes, though this is rare.
History
The letter A can be traced to a
pictogramA pictograph is an ideogram that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Earliest examples of pictographs include ancient or prehistoric drawings or paintings found on rock walls...
of an
oxAn ox is a bovine animal trained as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly adult, castrated male cattle, but cows or bulls may also be used in some areas...
head in Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet.
Circa 1600 B.C. the
Phoenician alphabetThe Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to originate around 1050 BCE. Unlike its Canaanite predecessor, the Phoenician alphabet was non-pictorial. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization...
's letter had a linear form that served as the base for some later forms. Its name must have corresponded closely to the
HebrewThe Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, and because of its place of origin, the Assyrian script is the better-known of two script standards used to write the...
aleph* Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...
.
BlackletterBlackletter, also known as Gothic script or Gothic minuscule, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to 1500. It continued to be used for the German language until the 20th century. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes the entire group of faces is...
A |
UncialUncial is a majuscule script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters are written in either Greek, Latin, or Gothic.-Development:...
A |
Another Blackletter A |
Modern Roman A |
Modern Italic A |
Modern Script A |
When the
Ancient GreeksAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
adopted the alphabet, they had no use for the
glottal stopThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English the feature is represented for example by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those attempting an authentic pronunciation of...
that the letter had denoted in
PhoenicianPhoenician was a language originally spoken in the coastal region then called "Pūt" in Ancient Egyptian, "Canaan" in Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic, and "Phoenicia" in Greek and Latin. Phoenician is a Semitic language of the Canaanite subgroup; its closest living relative is Hebrew...
and other
Semitic languagesThe Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 467 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
, so they used the sign for the vowel , and kept its name with a minor change (
alphaAlpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 1. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Aleph...
). In the earliest Greek inscriptions after the
Greek Dark AgesThe Greek Dark Ages and Greek Dark Age are terms which have regularly been used to refer to the period of Greek history from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean Palatial civilization around 1200 BC, to the first signs of the Greek city-states in the 9th century BC...
, dating to the 8th century BC, the letter rests upon its side, but in the
Greek alphabetThe Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is the first and oldest alphabet in the narrow sense that it notes each vowel and consonant with a separate symbol. It is as such in continuous use to...
of later times it generally resembles the modern capital letter, although many local varieties can be distinguished by the shortening of one leg, or by the angle at which the cross line is set.
The Etruscans brought the Greek alphabet to their civilization in the
Italian PeninsulaThe Italian Peninsula or Apennine Peninsula is one of the three peninsulas of Southern Europe , spanning 1,000 km from the Po Valley in the north to the central Mediterranean Sea in the south. The peninsula's shape gives it the nickname Lo Stivale...
and left the letter unchanged. The Romans later adopted the
Etruscan alphabetOld Italic refers to several now extinct alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European languages and non-Indo-European languages...
to write
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
, and the resulting letter was preserved in the modern
Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...
used to write many languages, including
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
.
The letter has two minuscule (lower-case) forms. The form used in most current handwriting, and in
italic typeIn typography, italic type refers to cursive typefaces based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. The influence from calligraphy can be seen in their usual slight slanting to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy...
, consists of a circle and vertical stroke , called
Latin alphaLatin alpha or script a, is a letter of the Latin alphabet, based on one lowercase form of a, or on the Greek lowercase alpha...
or "script a". Most printed material uses a form consisting of a small loop with an arc over it . Both derive from the majuscule (capital) form. In Greek handwriting, it was common to join the left leg and horizontal stroke into a single loop, as demonstrated by the Uncial version shown. Many fonts then made the right leg vertical. In some of these, the
serifIn typography, serifs are semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. A typeface that has serifs is called a serif typeface . A typeface without serifs is called sans-serif, from the French sans, meaning “without”...
that began the right leg stroke developed into an arc, resulting in the printed form, while in others it was dropped, resulting in the modern handwritten form.
Usage
In
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
, the letter "A" by itself usually denotes the
near-open front unrounded vowelThe near-open 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is {...
as in
pad, the
open back unrounded vowelThe open back 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is A...
as in
father, or, in concert with a later orthographic vowel, the diphthong as in
ace and
major, due to effects of the
great vowel shiftThe Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1450 and 1750....
.
In most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, the letter A denotes either an
open back unrounded vowelThe open back 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is A...
, or an open central unrounded vowel . In the International Phonetic Alphabet, variants of the letter A denote various
vowelIn phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
s. In
X-SAMPAThe Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at the University of London. It was designed to unify the individual language SAMPA alphabets, and extend SAMPA to cover the entire range of characters in the...
, capital A denotes the
open back unrounded vowelThe open back 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is A...
and lowercase a denotes the
open front unrounded vowelThe open 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 , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is a....
.
A is the third most common letter in English, and the second most common in
SpanishSpanish or Castilian is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that originated in northern Spain and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, evolving into the principal language of government and trade in the Iberian peninsula...
and
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
. In one study, on average, about 3.68% of letters in English tend to be
As, while the number is 6.22% in Spanish and 3.95% in French.
A is often used to denote something or someone of a better or more prestigious quality or status: A or A+, the best grade that can be assigned by teachers for students' schoolwork; A grade for clean restaurants;
A-ListThe A-list is a term that alludes to major movie stars, and/or the most bankable in the Hollywood movie industry.The A-list is part of a larger guide called The Hot List that has become an industry-standard guide in Hollywood. James Ulmer has also developed a Hot List of directors...
celebrities, etc. The number
1Year 1 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. The preceding year is 1 BC in the widely used Gregorian calendar or in its predecessor, the Julian calendar, neither of which has a "year zero".-Roman Empire:...
is used in a similar way.
A
turned 'a'Turned a is a letter of the Latin alphabet based upon the letter A. It is not, nor has it ever been, used in any natural languages as a letter in its own right....
(ɐ) is used by the
International Phonetic AlphabetThe 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...]
for the
near-open central vowelThe near-open central vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 6...
, while a turned capital 'A' (∀) is used in
predicate logicIn mathematical logic, predicate logic is the generic term for symbolic formal systems like first-order logic, second-order logic, many-sorted logic or infinitary logic. This formal system is distinguished from other systems in that its formulas contain variables which can be quantified. Two common...
to indicate
universal quantificationIn predicate logic, universal quantification formalizes the notion that something is true for everything, or every relevant thing....
.
Codes for computing
In
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard allowing computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
the capital A is codepoint U+0041 and the lower case a is U+0061.
The
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...
code for capital A is 65 and for lower case a is 97; or in
binaryThe binary numeral system, or base-2 number system represents numeric values using two symbols, 0 and 1. More specifically, the usual base-2 system is a positional notation with a radix of 2...
01000001 and 01100001, respectively.
The
EBCDICExtended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code is an 8-bit character encoding used on IBM mainframe operating systems such as z/OS, OS/390, VM and VSE, as well as IBM midrange computer operating systems such as OS/400 and i5/OS...
code for capital A is 193 and for lowercase a is 129.
The
numeric character referenceA numeric character reference is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-based markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represent a single character from the Universal Character Set of Unicode...
s in
HTMLHTML, which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists etc as well as for links, quotes, and other items. It allows images...
and
XMLXML is a set of rules for encoding documents electronically. It is defined in the produced by the W3C and several other related specifications; all are fee-free open standards....
are "
A" and "
a" for upper and lower case, respectively.
See also
- ª
- Æ
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 many languages, including, among others, Danish and Norwegian...
- Alpha
Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 1. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Aleph...
- Cyrillic A
A is the first letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It arose directly from the Greek letter alpha. In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was "азъ" az and it had a numerical value of 1....