A

A, a [Called ay, rhyming with say]. The 1st LETTER of the Roman ALPHABET as used for English. It descends from the Phoenician symbol for a GLOTTAL STOP, the sound at the beginning of its name, 'aleph (‘ox’). This letter, a consonant in Phoenician, was adopted by the Greeks as a vowel, A, to which they gave the name alpha. It was later adopted as A first by the Etruscans, then the Romans.

Sound values

(1) Short, as in hat, lack, apple. (2) Long, as in hate, lake, maple, chaos. In many accents of English, this sound is a diphthong, /eɪ/, often in RP with a special value before r, /eə/, as in vary, scarce. (3) In RP and related accents, phonetically long and open, /aː/, in such words as clam, dance, far, father. (4) SCHWA in weak syllables, as in avoid, prevalent, viable, vital, relevant, vicar, villa. In RP, the weak form sometimes has the value of short i, /ɪ/, as in private, village. (5) After /w/ and before /l/, a phonetically long, open value of o, /ɔː/, as in wall, war, water, quarter, tall; in RP, after w, a short o-sound, /ɒ/, as in swamp, swastika; likewise in yacht. (6) In any, many, the short e-sound in hen.

Digraphs and other combinations

With the value of long a in cases 1–3. (1) a-e, where one or more consonants separate a and e: hate, pale, waste. (2) ai, initially and medially: aid, pail, maintain. The value of short e is often heard in again, against, said. (3) ay, in final positions: day, dismay, relay. The value of short e is often heard in says. (4) au, initially and medially: sauce, author, because, laurel. These have values of o that tend to be accent-dependent: for example, /ɔ/ in RP, and /ɒ/ in AmE, sometimes with length variation. (5) aw, in all positions, but especially finally: awful, drawl, saw (with various values, many comparable to those of au). (6) aa, only in loans, such as: names from Hebrew, with the long-a value in Aaron, Canaan, and schwa in Isaac; from Afrikaans, with the value of phonetically long, open a (aardvark, kraal). (7) ae, in diverse loans, usually with the value of long a: maelstrom, from Dutch; Gael, from Celtic; Ishmael, Israel, from Hebrew. (8) As second element in a digraph (ea, oa), a usually indicates a special value for the first vowel, but is not itself pronounced: long e in east, beat, cheated, long o in oats, boat, soaked, with a glide effect before r in non-rhotic accents, as in fear, boar. (9) In four words, ea has the value of long a: break, great, steak, yea. (10) In many common words, the digraph ea is pronounced as short e: bread, meadow, ready, sweat, zealous. (11) The letter a combines in unusual, sometimes unique ways with other vowel letters in: aisle, aunt, beauty, broad, guinea, laugh, quay. (12) Distinctive values in loanwords are usually preserved: bureau, gauche, gaucho, naive/naïve. For the symbol æ, see DIGRAPH.

Variations

(1) In some pairs of derivationally associated words, a has been replaced or has disappeared in unstressed syllables (abstain/abstinence, maintain/maintenance, float/flotation); in others, it alternates with other letters (appearance/apparent, comparative/comparison, message/messenger). (2) There is variation in the endings -ant/ent, -ance/ence, -ancy/ency, producing such forms as assistant, concomitant, consistent, insistent, persistent, resistant. These differences relate to the historical derivation of the words in question: whether they were acquired directly from Latin or through French. If taken straight from Latin, the words derive from the participles of verbs that have either an a-stem (as with concomitant, from concomitans accompanying) or an e-stem (as with consistent, insistent, and persistent, from variations on the base form -sistens standing, setting). If, however, they are taken from French, they derive from participles all of which end in -ant, regardless of verb class (as with assistant and resistant). Sometimes, a distinction in meaning and use arises, as in dependant/dependent, but in ambiance/ambience there is no such distinction.