Å

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"A-ring" redirects here. For the ring of Saturn, see
A Ring
.
For other uses, see Å (disambiguation).
A with Overring
Å å
á
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
Language of originSwedish
Phonetic usage
  • [
    AO ao
    • Å å
Variationsá
Other
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

The letter Å (å in lower case) represents various (although often very similar)

Austro-Bavarian dialects of German.[1]

Though Å is derived from

ligature of an A with a smaller o above it to denote a long and darker A, a process similar to how the umlaut mark developed from a small e written above certain letters.[citation needed
]

Scandinavian languages

Origin

The Å-sound originally had the same origin as the long /aː/ sound in

Scandinavian
ål, hår).

Historically, the å derives from the Old Norse long /aː/ vowel (spelled with the letter á), but over time, it developed into an [ɔː] sound in most Scandinavian language varieties (in Swedish and Norwegian, it has eventually reached the pronunciation [oː]). Medieval writing often used doubled letters for long vowels, and the vowel continued to be written Aa.

In

Aa in the 16th century.[2]

In an attempt to modernize the orthography, linguists tried to introduce the Å to Danish and Norwegian writing in the 19th century. Most people felt no need for the new letter, as the letter group Aa had already been pronounced like Å for centuries in Denmark and Norway. Aa was usually treated as a single letter, spoken like the present Å when spelling out names or words. Orthography reforms making Å official were carried out in

Luxembourgish to use capitalized nouns
in the last decades, but abolished them at the same time.

In a few names of Danish cities or towns, the old spelling has been retained as an option due to local resistance, e.g. Aalborg and Aabenraa; however, Ålborg and Åbenrå are the spellings recommended by the Danish Language Board.[4] Between 1948 and 2010, the city of Aarhus was officially spelled Århus. However, the city has reverted to the Aa spelling starting 2011, in a controversial decision citing internationalization and web compatibility advantages.

Faroese are the only North Germanic languages not to use the å. The Old Norse letter á is retained, but the sound it now expresses is a diphthong, pronounced [au] in Icelandic and [ɔa] in Faroese. The short variation of Faroese á is pronounced [ɔ
], though.

Use in names

In some place names, the old Aa spelling dominates, more often in Denmark than in Norway (where it has been abolished in official use since 1917). Locals of Aalborg and Aabenraa resist the Å, whereas Ålesund is rarely seen with Aa spelling. Official rules allow both forms in the most common cases, but Å is always correct. Å as a word means "small river" in Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian and can be found in place names.

Before 1917, when spelling with the double A was common, some Norwegian place names contained three or four consecutive A letters: for instance Haaa (now Håa, a river) and Blaaaasen (Blååsen, 'the blue ("blå") ridge ("ås")').

In family names, the bearer of the name uses Aa or Å according to their choice, but since family names are inherited they are resistant to change and the traditional Aa style is often kept. For instance, the last name

Ågård. The surname Aa is always spelled with double A, never with the single å. However, given names - which are less commonly inherited - have largely changed to the use of the Å. For instance, in Norway more than 12,000 male citizens spell their name Håkon, while only around 2,500 are named Haakon
.

Company names are sometimes spelled with the double A by choice, usually in order to convey an impression of old-fashionedness or traditionality. The double A, representing a single sound, is usually kept in initials e.g. for people whose first, middle, and/or last name begins with the double A. Accordingly, a man named "Hans Aagard Hauge" would spell his initials "H. Aa. H." (not "H. A. H." nor "H. Å. H."), while a woman named Aase Vestergaard would spell her initials "Aa. V." (not "A. V." nor "Å. V.").

Alphabetization

Danish and Norwegian

Correct

Norwegian places Å as the last letter in the alphabet, the sequence being Æ, Ø
, Å. This is also true for the alternative spelling "Aa". Unless manually corrected, sorting algorithms of programs localised for Danish or Norwegian will place e.g., Aaron after Zorro.

In Danish the correct sorting of aa depends on pronunciation: If the sound is pronounced as one sound it is sorted as Å regardless of the sound is 'a' or 'å'; thus, for example, the German city Aachen is listed under Å, as well as the Danish city Aabenraa. This is §3 in the Danish Retskrivningsreglerne.[5]

Swedish

In the

Finnish alphabets, Å is sorted after Z, as the third letter from the end, the sequence being Å, Ä, Ö
. This is easiest to remember across the Nordic languages, that Danish and Norwegian follow Z first with E-mutated letters Æ and Ø and then the symbol with a one-stroke diacritic Å. Swedish and Finnish follow Z with a one-stroke diacritic Å and then a two-stroke (or two-dot) diacritic Ä, Ö. A combined Nordic sorting mnemonic is Æ, Ø, Å, Ä, Ö.

International transcription

Alternative spellings of the Scandinavian Å have become a concern because of globalization, and particularly because of the popularization of the

DNS
, and anyway do not feature on keyboards adapted for other languages. While it is recommended to keep the Å intact wherever possible, the next best thing is to use the older, double A spelling (e.g. "www.raade.com" instead of "www.råde.com"). This is because, as previously discussed, the Å/Aa indicates a separate sound. If the Å is represented as a common A without the overring (e.g. "www.rade.com") there is no indication that the A is supposed to represent another sound entirely. Even so, representing the Å as just an A is particularly common in Sweden, as compared to Norway and Denmark, because the spelling Aa has no traditional use there.

Finnish

The fact that Å is a common letter in Swedish while having no native use in Finnish has led to it being used as a concise symbol for the Swedish language in Finland, as in this campaign to rid Finnish schools of Mandatory Swedish. The phrase reads "Away with enforced Swedish".

Because the

ångström) and names of Swedish, Danish or Norwegian origin. In Finland there are many Swedish-speaking as well as many Finnish-speaking people with Swedish surnames, and many Swedish surnames include Å. In addition, there are many geographical places in the Finnish coastal areas and archipelago that have å in their Swedish names, such as Kråkö and Långnäs, as well as the Finnish autonomic region of Åland
, a group of islands midst between Sweden and Finland where almost all natives speak Swedish. The Finnish name for Å is ruotsalainen O ("Swedish O"), and is pronounced identically to O, which has the value [o̞]. (Note that in Swedish, the O is pronounced differently, [o].)

It is not allowed to substitute aa for å in Finnish, as aa is already a common letter combination with the value [ɑː].

Emilian

In

Emilian, å is used to represent the open-mid back unrounded vowel
[ʌ], e.g. Modenese dialect åmm, dånna [ˈʌmː], [ˈdʌnːa] "man, woman";

e.g. Bolognese dialect Bulåggna, dåpp [buˈlʌɲːa] [ˈdʌpː] "Bologna, later".

Walloon

The letter å was introduced to some eastern local variants of

Liege, and covered three sounds, a long open o, a long closed o, or a long a, depending on the local varieties. The use of a single å letter to cover such pronunciations has been embraced by the more recent pan-Walloon orthography
, with one orthography for words regardless of the local phonetic variations.

In non-standardized writings outside the Liege area, words containing å are written with au / ô (representing the same sound) or â. For example, the word måjhon (house) in the standardized orthography is spelled môjo(n), mâhon, maujon in dialectal writings (mohone is another form that does not contain a long å).

Istro-Romanian

The Istro-Romanian alphabet is based on the standard Romanian alphabet with three additional letters used to mark sounds specific only to this language: å, ľ and ń.

Javanese

Javanese uses å to indicate open-mid back rounded vowel ⟨ɔ⟩ together with ó (o acute).

Chamorro

Å and å are also used in the practical orthography of Chamorro, a language indigenous to the people of Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. The Chamorro name for Guam is Guåhån, and its capital is called Hagåtña.[6]

Greenlandic

In Greenlandic, å is not used in native words, but is used in several loanwords from Danish, such as båndoptageri (Danish båndoptager) 'tape recorder'. Like in Danish, å is sorted last in the alphabet.

Symbol for ångström

The letter "Å" (U+00C5) is also used as the international symbol for the non-

uppercase
in this context (symbols for units named after persons are generally uppercase). The ångström is equal to 10−10 m (one ten-billionth of a meter) or 0.1 nm.

In

canonically equivalent to the ordinary letter Å. The duplicate encoding at U+212B is due to round-trip mapping compatibility with an East-Asian character encoding, but is otherwise not to be used.[7]

On computers

Danish keyboard with keys for Æ, Ø and Å.
On Norwegian keyboards the Æ and Ø trade places.
Character information
Preview Å å Å
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE ANGSTROM SIGN
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 197 U+00C5 229 U+00E5 8491 U+212B
UTF-8 195 133 C3 85 195 165 C3 A5 226 132 171 E2 84 AB
Numeric character reference Å Å å å Å Å
Named character reference Å, Å å
EBCDIC family 103 67 71 47
15
 197 C5 229 E5
alt code Alt+143 Alt+134
Mac keycode ⌥ Option+⇧ Shift+a ⌥ Option+a
TeX \AA \aa

Similarly styled trademarks

The logo of the Major League Baseball team known as the Los Angeles Angels is a capital "A" with a halo. Due to the resemblance, some Angels fans stylize the name as "Ångels".

The logo of the Stargate series similarly features a stylized A with a circle above it, making it resemble an Å as in Stargåte; in Norwegian, gåte means "riddle".

Cirque du Soleil's Koozå production uses this character in its logo, although it is pronounced by the main singer as a regular "a".

British producer and singer Låpsley uses it in her stage name.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The Sound of the Austro-Bavarian language- Salzburg dialect (Numbers, Greetings & Story). Retrieved 2024-04-01 – via www.youtube.com.
  2. ^ Pettersson (1996), p. 139
  3. tv2.dk
    . Retrieved 14 April 2021.
  4. ^ Orthography rules, §3.2 Archived 2010-05-13 at the Wayback Machine, sproget.dk (in Danish)
  5. ^ https://dsn.dk/ordboeger/retskrivningsordbogen/%c2%a7-1-6-bogstaver-og-tegn/%c2%a7-3-aa-og-dobbelt-a/
  6. ^ "Chamorro Orthography Rules". Guampedia. Archived from the original on 22 September 2020. Retrieved 20 August 2020.
  7. ISBN 9780201700527
    .

References
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