Æ alone and in context

Æ (minuscule: æ) is a grapheme formed from the letters a and e. In Typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in written language. The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is a (eɪ plural E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e (iː plural es or ees (also written E's 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. Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. In Phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (from Greek grc δίφθογγος "diphthongos" literally "with two sounds" or "with A letter is an element in an Alphabetic system of writing such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants As a letter of the Old English 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/). Futhorc, a Runic alphabet used by the Anglo-Saxons, was descended from the Elder Futhark of 24 runes and contained between 26 and 33 characters Futhorc, a Runic alphabet used by the Anglo-Saxons, was descended from the Elder Futhark of 24 runes and contained between 26 and 33 characters Transliteration is the practice of Transcribing a Word or text written in one Writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice

Usage

In English, usage of the ligature varies in different places. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States In modern typography, and where technological limitations prevent (such as in use of typewriters) æ is often eschewed for the digraph ae. A typewriter is a mechanical or Electromechanical device with a set of "keys" that when pressed cause characters to be printed on a medium A digraph, bigraph, or digram is a pair of characters used to write one Phoneme (distinct sound or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond 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. In Old Norse, áss (or ǫ́ss ás, plural æsir, feminine ásynja, feminine plural ásynjur) is the term denoting one of the principal Ærø (from Danish Ær = Maple and Ø = Island) is one of the Danish Baltic Sea islands and part of g. Æon Flux, Encyclopædia Britannica). Æon Flux (ˌiːɒn ˈflʌks is an Avant garde American Science fiction Animated television series that aired on MTV The Encyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopaedia published by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc 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. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the American and British English spelling differences are one aspect of American and British English differences. However, given the long history of such spellings, they are sometimes used to invoke archaism or in literal quotations of historic sources, for words such as dæmon.

In Classical Latin, the combination AE denotes a diphthong (IPA [ai̯]) that had a value similar to the long i in most dialects of modern English. Classical Latin is the form of the Latin language used by the ancient Romans in what is usually regarded as "classical" Latin literature. It was used both in native words (spelled with ai before the 2nd century BC) and in borrowings from Greek words having the diphthong αι (alpha iota). The 2nd century BC started the first day of 200 BC and ended the last day of 101 BC. Greek (el ελληνική γλώσσα or simply el ελληνικά — "Hellenic" is an Indo-European language, spoken today by 15-22 million people mainly Iota (uppercase &Iota, lowercase ι Ιώτα Yota is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. 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 a simple vowel (IPA [ɛ]) in the imperial period. In some medieval scripts, the ligature was simplified to ę, small letter e with ogonek, the e-caudata. The ogonek ( Polish for "little tail" the Diminutive of ogon) is a Diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the The e caudata ("tailed e" is a modified form of the letter E that can be graphically represented as E with Ogonek ( ę) 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. A liturgical book is a book published by the authority of a Church, that contains the text and directions for the Liturgy of its official Religious services

In Old English, the ligature was used to denote a sound intermediate between those of a and e (IPA [æ]), very much like the short a of cat in many dialects of modern English. The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is a (eɪ plural E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e (iː plural es or ees (also written E's E

In the modern French alphabet, it is used to spell Latin and Greek borrowings like tænia and ex æquo. The French alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet. It uses the standard 26 letters

Ossetic Latin script. Part of a page from a book published in 1935

In most varieties of Faroese, æ is pronounced as follows:

• IPA [ɛa] 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 [eː] when directly followed by the sound [a], as in ræðast (silent ð) and frægari (silent g)
• [a] in all other cases

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 [e:] or [ɛ]:

• æða (eider): Suð. Year 1935 ( MCMXXXV) was a Common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. The Faroese alphabet consists of 29 letters derived from the Latin alphabet: See also Alphabets derived from the Latin Old Norse is the North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age [eːa], Northern Faroese [ɛaːva]
• ætt (family, direction): Suð. [ɛtː], Northern Faroese [atː]

In Icelandic, æ signifies a diphthong (IPA: [ai]). Icelandic ( is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland. In Phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (from Greek grc δίφθογγος "diphthongos" literally "with two sounds" or "with

In Danish and Norwegian, æ represents monophthongal vowel phonemes. The Danish and Norwegian Alphabet is based upon the Latin alphabet and has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 (Norwegian and 1955 The Danish and Norwegian Alphabet is based upon the Latin alphabet and has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 (Norwegian and 1955 In Norwegian there are four ways of pronouncing the letter:

• /æː/ as in æ (the name of the letter), bær, læring, æra, Ænes, ærlig, tærne, Kværner, Dæhlie, særs, ærfugl, lært, trær ("trees")
• /æ/ as in færre, æsj, nærmere, Færder, Skjærvø, ærverdig, vært, lærd, Bræin (where æi is pronounced as a diphthong /æi/)
• /eː/ as in Sæther, Næser, Sæbø, gælisk, spælsau, bevæpne, sæd, æser, Cæsar, væte, trær ("thread(s)" (verb))
• /e/ as in Sæth, Næss, Brænne, væske, trædd

In the South and Western Danish dialects, as well as in several Norwegian dialects (for instance the dialects of Trondheim and Tromsø), the phoneme Æ has a significant meaning, "I", and is thus a normal spoken word. Kværner was a Norway -based Engineering and Construction services company in existence between 1853 and 2005 when it was merged Bjørn Dæhlie (born June 19, 1967) is a retired Norwegian cross-country skier. Hotel Cæsar is a Norwegian Soap opera that has been broadcast Monday to Friday on TV2 since 1998. Naess or Næss is a surname and may refer to Leona Naess, singer and songwriter daughter of Norwegian mountaineer and businessman Arne Næss Jr (Trondhjem is a city and municipality in the county of Sør-Trøndelag, Norway. ( Romsa in Northern Sami, Tromssa in Kven and Finnish) is a city and municipality in the county of Troms, In some Southern-Jutish dialects Æ is also the definite article: 'Æ hus' (The house). These dialects are rarely committed to writing.

The Danish and Norwegian usage of 'Ӕ' is equivalent to the vowel and letter 'Ä' in the Swedish alphabet and language. " Ä " or " ä " is a character which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets or the letter A with The Swedish Alphabet consists of the following 29 letters Upper Case A, B, C, D, E, F Swedish ( is a North Germanic language spoken by more than nine million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the

The Ossetic language used the letter æ when it was written using the Latin script (1923–38). Ossetic or Ossetian (Ирон ӕвзаг Iron ævzag or Иронау Ironau) also sometimes called Ossete, is an Iranian Year 1923 ( MCMXXIII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Year 1938 ( MCMXXXVIII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Since then, Ossetian has used a Cyrillic alphabet with an identical-looking letter (Ӕ and ӕ). The Cyrillic alphabet (səˈrɪlɪk also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters is actually a family of Alphabets, subsets of which are used by Ӕ ӕ is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet now used in Ossetic to represent the Near-open front unrounded vowel /æ/

Another example of use: In the southern part of Norway, Kristiansand, Æ has a meaning of both "I" and "Is". (formerly "Christianssand" is a city and municipality, and the capital of the county of Vest-Agder, Norway and of the geographical Æ can represent both meanings in the same short sentence, "Æ æ glad" ("I am happy"). Or just the one meaning; "Han æ glad" ("He is happy"). Note that this has usually in everyday conversation use, although there seems to be a going trend towards using it in writing as well, as in the slogan "Æ æ Startfan" ("I am a Start fan", referring to a local football club).

International Phonetic Alphabet

The symbol [æ] is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to denote a near-open front unrounded vowel, as in the word cat in many dialects of modern English: this is the sound most likely represented by the Old English letter. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic In this context, it is always in lowercase. Lower case (also lower-case or lowercase) minuscule, or small letters are the smaller form of letters as opposed to upper

Computer use

Danish keyboard with keys for Æ, Ø and Å.
On Norwegian keyboards the Æ and Ø trade places.

The Æ character (among others, including Å and ø) is accessible using AltGr+z on a modern US-International keyboard

For computers, when using the Latin-1 or Unicode character sets, the code points for Æ and æ are U+00C6 and U+00E6, respectively, or 198 and 230 in decimal. The letter Å represents various sounds in the Swedish, Finnish (although no native Finnish words contain the letter å Danish, Norwegian The " Ø " ( minuscule: " ø " is a Vowel and a letter used in the Danish, Faroese and Norwegian AltGr is a Modifier key on PC keyboards used to type many characters primarily ones that are unusual for the locale of the Keyboard layout, such QWERTY keyboardjpg|thumb|right|300px|QWERTY keyboard on a Laptop of 2007]]A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional A computer is a Machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. ISO 8859-1, more formally cited as ISO/IEC 8859-1 is part 1 of ISO/IEC 8859, a standard Character encoding of the Latin alphabet. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's The characters can be entered by holding the Alt key while typing in 0198 or 0230 on the number pad on Windows systems (the Alt key and 145 for æ or 146 for Æ may also work if the system is in the IBM437 or IBM850 codepages), or by holding down the option key while typing an apostrophe ( ' ) on a Macintosh system under various keyboard layouts, including the U.S. layout. For a list of keyboard shortcuts see Table of keyboard shortcuts The Alt key on a computer keyboard is used to change (alternate the function Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. The 'Option key' is a Modifier key present on Apple keyboards It is located between the Control key and Command key on a typical Mac keyboard Macintosh, commonly nicknamed Mac is a Brand name which covers several lines of Personal computers designed developed and marketed by Apple Inc The United States of America —commonly referred to as the In Microsoft Word, Ӕ and ӕ can be written using the key combination CTRL + SHIFT + & followed by A or a. Microsoft Word is Microsoft 's flagship word processing software.

On US-International keyboards, Æ is accessible with the combination of AltGr+z. QWERTY keyboardjpg|thumb|right|300px|QWERTY keyboard on a Laptop of 2007]]A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional AltGr is a Modifier key on PC keyboards used to type many characters primarily ones that are unusual for the locale of the Keyboard layout, such

In X, AltGr+A is often mapped to æ/Æ, or a Compose key sequence Compose + a + e can be used. AltGr is a Modifier key on PC keyboards used to type many characters primarily ones that are unusual for the locale of the Keyboard layout, such On some Computer systems a compose key is a key which is designated to signal the Software to interpret the next keystrokes as a combination in order to produce a For more information, see Unicode input methods. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's

There is also Cyrillic Ӕ and ӕ in Unicode (U+04D4, U+04D5), 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). The Cyrillic alphabet (səˈrɪlɪk also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters is actually a family of Alphabets, subsets of which are used by

In HTML, the HTML character entity references Æ and æ have been assigned to Æ and æ, respectively, where “lig” stands for ligature. HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant Markup language for Web pages It provides a means to describe the structure In the Markup languages SGML, HTML, XHTML and XML, a character entity reference is a reference to a particular kind of named

Æ as abbreviation

Æ and æ were quite commonly used as abbreviations for Latin aetate or aetate sua meaning, roughly, "at the age of" N years (the implied construction being an ablative absolute); also the genitive aetatis suae, Nth year "of his/her age". Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. The grammar of Latin, like that of other ancient Indo-European languages, is highly inflected, which allows for a large degree of flexibility when choosing word order In Grammar, the genitive case or possessive case (also called the second case) is the case that marks a Noun as modifying another In inscriptions and records, the most common use is for the age at death.

George William Russell, the fin de siècle Irish poet, signed himself Æ meaning "Æon". George William Russell ( April 10, 1867 &ndash July 17, 1935) who wrote under the Pseudonym Æ (sometimes Fin de siècle (fɑ̃ dɛ si'ɛːkl French for ‛end of the century‘ was a cultural movement between 1880 and the beginning of World War I. The word aeon, also spelled eon or æon, means "age" "forever" or "for Eternity "

Some Autechre recordings bear the abbreviated logo, Ae. Autechre are an English Electronic music group consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth both natives of Rochdale, England.

Æ can be used in written communication by two people who are in love as a dual number pronoun, replacing "we" and "us". Dual is a Grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and Plural.

The website Encyclopedia Dramatica uses æ as its logo. Encyclopædia Dramatica is a collaborative Website whose stated purpose is to provide a central catalog for the e-public to view parody and satire of "drama"

Aylmer Express uses æ as its logo

See also

• Æ (Cyrillic)
• Ae (digraph)
• Å
• Ä
• E caudata
• Ø
• Ö
• Œ
• List of words spelled with æ
• Near-open front unrounded vowel (represented by æ in the IPA)
• Ansuz rune

References

• Robert Bringhurst (2002). Ӕ ӕ is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet now used in Ossetic to represent the Near-open front unrounded vowel /æ/ Ae is a digraph consisting of the letters A and E that occurs in many Languages In Irish orthography it stands for the vowel The letter Å represents various sounds in the Swedish, Finnish (although no native Finnish words contain the letter å Danish, Norwegian " Ä " or " ä " is a character which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets or the letter A with The e caudata ("tailed e" is a modified form of the letter E that can be graphically represented as E with Ogonek ( ę) The " Ø " ( minuscule: " ø " is a Vowel and a letter used in the Danish, Faroese and Norwegian O-Umlaut The glyph O with Umlaut appears in the German alphabet. This article is about the typographic ligature for other uses see Oe Œ This list of words that may be spelled with a ligature in English encompasses words which have letters that may in modern usage either be rendered as two distinct letters Robert Bringhurst (born October 16, 1946) is a Poet, Typographer and Author. The Elements of Typographic Style, page 271. The Elements of Typographic Style is a book by Canadian Typographer, Poet and Translator Robert Bringhurst. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-205-5