This article is about the letter. For the indefinite article, see A and an.

For
other uses, see A (disambiguation).
A
Basic Latin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd
Ee Ff Gg Hh
Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn
Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt
Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
A (Listeni /eɪ/; named a, plural aes)[1] is the first letter and a vowel in the ba
sic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from
which it derives.
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Origins
* 2 Usage
* 3 Computing codes
* 4 Other representations
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 External links
Origins
"A" can be traced to a pictogram of an ox head in Egyptian hieroglyph or the Pro
to-Sinaitic alphabet.[2]
Egyptian Proto-Semitic
ox's head Phoenician
aleph Greek
Alpha Etruscan
A Roman/Cyrillic
A
Egyptian hieroglyphic ox head Proto-semitic ox head Phoenician aleph
Greek alpha Etruscan A Roman A
In 1600 B.C., the Phoenician alphabet's letter had a linear form that served as
the base for some later forms. Its name must have corresponded closely to the He
brew or Arabic aleph.
Blackletter A
Blackletter A Uncial A
Uncial A Another Capital A
Another Blackletter A
Modern Roman A
Modern Roman A Modern Italic A
Modern Italic A Modern Script A
Modern Script A
When the Ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they had no use for the glottal st
op that the letter had denoted in Phoenician and other Semitic languages, so the
y used the sign to represent the vowel /a/, and kept its name with a minor chang
e (alpha). In the earliest Greek inscriptions after the Greek Dark Ages, dating
to the 8th century BC, the letter rests upon its side, but in the Greek alphabet
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 ang
le at which the cross line is set.
The Etruscans brought the Greek alphabet to their civilization in the Italian Pe
ninsula and left the letter unchanged. The Romans later adopted the Etruscan alp
habet to write the Latin language, and the resulting letter was preserved in the
modern Latin alphabet used to write many languages, including English.
Typographic variants include a double-story a and single-story ɑ.
The letter has two minuscule (lower-case) forms. The form used in most current h
andwriting consists of a circle and vertical stoke ("ɑ"), called Latin alpha or "s
cript a". Most printed material uses a form consisting of a small loop with an a
rc over it ("a"). Both derive from the majuscule (capital) form. In Greek handwr
iting, it was common to join the left leg and horizontal stroke into a single lo
op, as demonstrated by the Uncial version shown. Many fonts then made the right
leg vertical. In some of these, the serif that began the right leg stroke develo
ped into an arc, resulting in the printed form, while in others it was dropped,
resulting in the modern handwritten form.
Usage
Main article: a (disambiguation)
In English, "a" by itself frequently denotes the near-open front unrounded vowel
(/æ/) as in pad, the open back unrounded vowel (/ɑː/) as in father, or, in concert wi
th a later orthographic vowel, the diphthong /eɪ/ as in ace and major, due to effe
cts of the great vowel shift.
In most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, "a" denotes an open front u
nrounded vowel (/a/). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, variants of "a" de
note various vowels. In X-SAMPA, capital "A" denotes the open back unrounded vow
el and lowercase "a" denotes the open front unrounded vowel.
"A" is the third common used letter in English, and the second most common in Sp
anish and French. In one study, on average, about 3.68% of letters used in Engli
sh tend to be ‹a›s, while the number is 6.22% in Spanish and 3.95% in French.[3]
"A" is often used to denote something or someone of a better or more prestigious
quality or status: A-, A or A+, the best grade that can be assigned by teachers
for students' schoolwork; A grade for clean restaurants; A-List celebrities, et
c. Such associations can have a motivating effect as exposure to the letter A ha
s been found to improve performance, when compared with other letters.[4]
A turned "a", ‹ɐ› is used by the International Phonetic Alphabet for the near-open cen
tral vowel, while a turned capital "A" ("∀ ) is used in predicate logic to specify
universal quantification.
Computing codes
Different glyphs of Unicode U+0061.
In Unicode, the capital A is codepoint U+0041 and the lower case a is U+0061
.[5]
The closed form ( ɑ"), which is related with the lowercase alpha, has codepoint U+
0251 (from the Code Chart "IPA Extensions".
The ASCII code for capital "A" is 65 and for lower case "a" is 97; or in binary
01000001 and 01100001, respectively.
The EBCDIC code for capital "A" is 193 and for lowercase "a" is 129; or in binar
y 11000001 and 10000001, respectively.
The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "A" and "a" for upp
er and lower case, respectively.
Other representations
Alternative representations of A
NATO phonetic Morse code
Alpha —–
ICS Alpha.svg Semaphore Alpha.svg ⠁
Signal flag Flag semaphore Braille
See also
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: A
* ª
* Æ
* Alpha
* Cyrillic A
References
1. ^ "A" (word), Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989). Aes is the pl
ural of the name of the letter. The plural of the letter itself is: As, A's, as,
or a's.
2. ^ "A". The World Book Encyclopedia, Volume 1. Field Enterprises, Inc. 1956
. p. 1.
3. ^ "Percentages of Letter frequencies per Thousand words", Trinity College,
Retrieved 2006-05-01.
4. ^ Letters affect exam results. British Psychological Society. 9 March 2010
. http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20100903-20689.html
5. ^ "Javascript Unicode Chart", macchiato.com, 2009, Retrieved 2009-03-08.
External links
Look up A or a in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
* History of the Alphabet
* Wikisource logo Texts on Wikisource:
o “A” in A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson
o Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). A (entry). Encyclopædia Britannica (Elev
enth ed.). Cambridge University Press.
o A . The New Student's Reference Work. Chicago: F. E. Compton and Co
. 1914.
o A . Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.
The ISO basic Latin alphabetv — d — e
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj
Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt
Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Letter A with diacritics
ÁáÀàĂăẮắẰằẴẵẲẳÂâẤấẦầẪẫẨẩǍǎÅåǺǻÄäǞǟÃãȦȧǠǡĄąĀāẢảȀȁȂȃẠạẶặẬậḀḁ ɐ ɑ
history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list
letters • ISO/IEC 646
Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A
Categories: Latin letters | Vowel letters
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