Æ (Lower case: æ also known as labor lapsus^[1]) 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 and Norwegian. 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: /ˈæʃ/).

[edit] Usage

Æ alone and in context

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 favour 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 words such as dæmon. Often, it will be replaced with a simple "ae" as in archaeology.

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. 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). 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. 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.

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.

In the modern French alphabet, it is used to spell Latin and Greek borrowings like tænia and ex æquo.

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 [eː] or [ɛ]:

• æða (either): Suð. [eːa], Northern Faroese [ɛaːva]
• ætt (family, direction): Suð. [ɛtː], Northern Faroese [atː]

In Icelandic, æ signifies a diphthong (IPA: [ai]).

In Danish and Norwegian, æ represents monophthongal vowel phonemes. 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, træer ("trees")
• /æ/ as in færre, æsj, nærmere, Færder, Skjærvø, ærverdig, vært, lærd, Bræin (where æi is pronounced as a diphthong /æi/)

And in some sociolects:

• /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. In some Southern-Jutish dialects Æ is also the definite article: 'Æ hus' (The house). These dialects are rarely committed to writing^{[dubious – discuss]}.

The Danish and Norwegian usage of 'Ӕ' is equivalent to the vowel and 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).

Another example of use: In the southern part of Norway, Kristiansand, Æ has a meaning of both "I" and "Is". Æ can represent both meanings in the same short sentence, "Æ æ gla" ("I am happy"). Or just the one meaning; "Han æ gla" ("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). It is also possible to write an entire sentence with only vowels: "Æ e i åa å o e i åa o å" (in Trondheim dialect, "I am in the river and she is in the river as well").

[edit] 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. In this context, it is always in lowercase.

[edit] 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 $00C6 and $00E6, respectively, or 198 and 230 in decimal. 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.
• In the TeX typesetting system, ӕ is produced by \ae.
• In Microsoft Word, Æ and æ can be written using the key combination CTRL + SHIFT + & followed by A or a respectively.
• On US-International keyboards, Æ is accessible with the combination of AltGr+z.
• In X, AltGr+A is often mapped to æ/Æ, or a Compose key sequence Compose + a + e can be used. For more information, see Unicode input methods.
• 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).
• In HTML, the HTML character entity references Æ and æ have been assigned to Æ and æ, respectively, where “lig” is short for ligature.
• In all versions of the Mac OS (Systems 1 through 8, Mac OS 9, and the current Mac OS X), the following key combinations are used: æ: Option + ' (apostrophe key), Æ: Shift + Option + ' ; å: Option + A, Å: Shift + Option + A; ø: Option + O, Ø: Shift + Option + O.
• On the iPhone and/or iPod touch, as well as phones running Google's Android OS, æ and Æ are accessed by holding down "A" until a small menu is displayed.

[edit] Gender-neutrality in Spanish and Portuguese

In Portuguese and Spanish, as well in other West Iberian languages where many words ended in '-e' when in the masculine gender and ended '-a' in the feminine, 'æ' can be used as a gender-neutral substitute which some advocates of gender-neutral language-modification feel indicates implicit linguistic disregard for women. In these languages the masculine forms are used when referring to groups of mixed or unknown sex. The ligature is intended to join together the feminine and the masculine desinences, in their singular forms ('-a' and '-e', respectively), and in plural ('-as' and '-es').

Examples:

• Spanish: profesores (male teachers) ∪ profesoras (female teachers) ≈ profesoræs (male and/or female teachers)
• Portuguese: ela (she) ∪ ele (he) ≈ elæ (she or he)
• Both: escritoras (female writers) ∪ escritores (male writers) ≈ escritoræs (writers of both sexes, or simply writers, disregarding sex information) .

Proponents of the ligature usage argue that it allows shorter constructions than their gender-inclusive equivalents with the slash sign '/' in Spanish and with the parentheses '()' in Portuguese. For instance, profesoræs has three fewer characters than profesores/as. Opponents of such language modification feel that they are degrading to the language. Many also raise the question of how these new words are to be pronounced. According to the proposal Português com Inclusão de Gênero (Portuguese With Inclusion of Gender)^[2], Spanish speakers and those who speak Portuguese with no vowel reduction can pronounce the ligature with the phoneme [ɛ], only paying attention not to modify the stressed syllable. Since 'escritores' (/eskriˈtores/) and 'escritoras' (/eskriˈtoras/) are paroxitones, 'escritoræs' should also be. So, its suggested pronunciation is /eskriˈtorɛs/.

The majority of Portuguese speakers, who do reduce a final '-e' to [i] ('escritores' is said as /eskriˈtoris/ or /iskriˈtoris/), have more phonetic options. They can pronounce 'escritoræs' as /eskriˈtores/ (or as /iskriˈtores/).

[edit] 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

[edit] External links

• Adding Æ and æ to Fonts
• Gender-inclusive use of æ in Portuguese (and in Spanish too): 2 - A língua e o sexo (2 - Tongue and Sex), Quartos (quarters) I, II and III, one of the subjects of Controversial Numbers project

[edit] References

• Robert Bringhurst (2002). The Elements of Typographic Style, page 271. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-205-5