Æ
| Æ | |
|---|---|
| Æ æ | |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Latin script |
| Type | Typographic ligature |
| Language of origin | Latin language |
| Sound values | [æ, a, ɐ, i, ɛ, e] |
| In Unicode | U+00C6, U+00E6 |
| History | |
| Development | |
| Sisters | Ӕ |
| Other | |
| Writing direction | Left-to-right |
Æ (lowercase: æ) is a character formed from the letters a and e, originally a ligature representing the Latin diphthong ae. It has been promoted to the status of a letter in some languages, including Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese. It was also used in both Old Swedish, before being replaced by ä, and Old English, where it was eventually dropped entirely in favour of a. The modern International Phonetic Alphabet uses it to represent the near-open front unrounded vowel (the sound represented by the 'a' in English words like cat). Diacritic variants include Ǣ/ǣ, Ǽ/ǽ, Æ̀/æ̀, Æ̂/æ̂ and Æ̃/æ̃.
As a letter of the Old English Latin 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, or æsh (Old English: æsċ) if the ligature is included.