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A. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Due to technical restrictions, A# redirects here. For other uses, see A-sharp (disambiguation). This article is about the letter. For the indefinite article, see A and an. For other uses, see A (disambiguation). 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 (i/eɪ/; named a, plural aes)[1] 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. Contents [hide] 1 Origins 2 Usage 3 Computing codes 4 Other representations 5 See also 6 References 7 External links [edit]Origins "A" may have started as a pictogram of an ox head in Egyptian hieroglyph. It has stood at the head of every alphabet in which it has been found, the earliest of which being the Phoenician.[2] Egyptian Phoenician aleph Greek Alpha Etruscan A Roman/Cyrillic 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 Hebrew or Arabic aleph. Blackletter A Uncial A Another Blackletter A Modern Roman A Modern Italic A Modern Script A When the Ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they had no use for the glottal stop that the letter had denoted in Phoenician and other Semitic languages, so they used the sign to represent the vowel /a/, and kept its name with a minor change (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 angle at which the cross line is set. The Etruscans brought the Greek alphabet to their civilization in the Italian Peninsula and left the letter unchanged. The Romans later adopted the Etruscan alphabet 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 handwriting consists of a circle and vertical stroke ("ɑ"), called Latin alpha or "script a". This slowly developed from the fifth-century form resembling the Greek letter tau in the hands of dark-age Irish and English writers.[2] Most printed material uses a form consisting of a small loop with an arc over it ("a"). 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 serif 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. [edit]Usage Main article: a (disambiguation) The letter A currently represents six different vowel sounds. 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, its original, Latin and Greek, sound; a closer, further fronted sound as in "hare", which developed as the sound progressed from "father" to "ace";[2] in concert with a later orthographic vowel, the diphthong /eɪ/ as in ace and major, due to effects of the great vowel shift; the more rounded form in "water" or its closely-related cousin, found in "was".[2] In most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, "a" denotes an open front unrounded vowel (/a/). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, variants of "a" denote various vowels. In X-SAMPA, capital "A" denotes the open back unrounded vowel and lowercase "a" denotes the open front unrounded vowel. "A" is the third most commonly used letter in English, and the second most common in Spanish and French. In one study, on average, about 3.68% of letters used in English 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, etc. Such associations can have a motivating effect as exposure to the letter A has 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 central vowel, while a turned capital "A" ("∀") is used in predicate logic to specify universal quantification. [edit]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".[6] 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 binary 11000001 and 10000001, respectively. The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "A" and "a" for upper and lower case, respectively. [edit]Other representations Alternative representations of A NATO phonetic Morse code Alpha ·– Signal flag Flag semaphore Braille [edit]See also Wikimedia Commons has media related to: A ª Æ Alpha Cyrillic A [edit]References ^ "A" (word), Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, 1989. Aes is the plural of the name of the letter. The plural of the letter itself is: As, A's, as, or a's. ^ a b c d "A", "Encyclopaedia Britannica", Volume 1, 1962. p.1. ^ "Percentages of Letter frequencies per Thousand words", Trinity College, Retrieved 2006-05-01. ^ Letters affect exam results. British Psychological Society. 9 March 2010 ^ "Javascript Unicode Chart", macchiato.com, 2009, Retrieved 2009-03-08. ^ Unicode.org [edit]External links Look up A or a in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. History of the Alphabet Texts on Wikisource: “A” in A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "A" (entry). Encyclopædia Britannica (Eleventh ed.). Cambridge University Press. "A". The New Student's Reference Work. Chicago: F. E. Compton and Co. 1914. "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 Áá Àà Ăă Ắắ Ằằ Ẵẵ Ẳẳ Ââ Ấấ Ầầ Ẫẫ Ẩẩ Ǎǎ Åå Ǻǻ Ää Ǟǟ Ãã Ȧȧ Ǡǡ Ąą Āā Ảả Ȁȁ Ȃȃ Ạạ Ặặ Ậậ Ḁḁ Ⱥⱥ ᶏ Ɐɐ Ɑɑ Related History • Palaeography • Derivations • Diacritics • Punctuation • Numerals • Unicode • List of letters • ISO/IEC 646 View page ratings Rate this page What's this? Trustworthy Objective Complete Well-written I am highly knowledgeable about this topic (optional) Submit ratings Categories: ISO basic Latin letters | Vowel letters Log in / create accountArticleDiscussionReadEditView history Main page Contents Featured content Current events Random article Donate to Wikipedia Interaction Help About Wikipedia Community portal Recent changes Contact Wikipedia Toolbox Print/export Languages Acèh Afrikaans Alemannisch العربية Aragonés ܐܪܡܝܐ Asturianu Azərbaycanca Bân-lâm-gú Башҡортса Беларуская Беларуская (тарашкевіца) Boarisch Bosanski Brezhoneg Български Català Česky chiTumbuka Corsu Cymraeg Dansk Deutsch ދިވެހިބަސް Eesti Ελληνικά Emiliàn e rumagnòl Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Frysk Furlan Gaelg Gàidhlig Galego 贛語 Хальмг 한국어 Hrvatski Ido Ilokano Bahasa Indonesia Interlingua Íslenska Italiano עברית Basa Jawa ქართული Kernowek Kiswahili Kreyòl ayisyen Kurdî Latina Latviešu Lëtzebuergesch Lietuvių Lumbaart Magyar Македонски Malagasy മലയാളം मराठी مازِرونی Bahasa Melayu မြန်မာဘာသာ Nāhuatl Nederlands 日本語 Nnapulitano Norsk (bokmål) Norsk (nynorsk) Nouormand O'zbek Polski Português Qırımtatarca Română Runa Simi Русский Sámegiella Seeltersk Sicilianu Simple English Slovenčina Slovenščina Ślůnski Sranantongo Српски / Srpski Srpskohrvatski / Српскохрватски Basa Sunda Suomi Svenska Tagalog ไทย Türkçe Türkmençe Українська Tiếng Việt Volapük Winaray ייִדיש Yorùbá 粵語 Zazaki Žemaitėška 中文 This page was last modified on 18 August 2011 at 09:30. 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