Å

For other uses, see Å (disambiguation).

The letter Å represents various o sounds in the Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, North Frisian, Walloon, Chamorro and Istro-Romanian language alphabets. Other alphabets using the letter include the Lule Sami, Skolt Sami and Southern Sami alphabet.

Å is often perceived as an A with a ring, interpreting the ring as a diacritical mark. However, in the languages that use it the ring is not considered a diacritic, but part of the letter. Rather, the letter developed as a form of semi-ligature of an A with a small o above it to denote the changed sound value, similar to how the umlaut mark ¨ is developed from a small e written above the letter in question.

Nordic languages

Closeup on Å, Ä and Ö on a dirty Swedish keyboard.

The letter Å in Nordic alphabets represents two sounds, a short and a long.

• The short version (IPA /ɔ/) is similar in quality to, but shorter than, the vowel as pronounced in the words hall or dawn by speakers of Received Pronunciation (RP) and some conservative varieties of General American.
• In Swedish and Norwegian, the long version (IPA /oː/) is like the 'a' in called as spoken in American English and some northern British (but not as in RP). In Danish, the long version is pronounced (IPA /ɔː/), similar to the vowel in the word bored as spoken in RP or American English.

Origin

In historical linguistics the Å-sound has the same origin as the long /aː/ sound in German Aal and Haar (Scandinavian ål, hår, English "eel", "hair").

Historically the letter Å is correspondent to the Old Norse vowel á. This was a long /aː/ sound, but over time, the vowel developed to an [ɔ](open o) sound. Medieval writing often used doubled letters for long vowels, and the vowel continued to be written Aa. In Swedish the letter Å replaced Aa in the 16th century.

In an attempt to modernise 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, although the letter group Aa had already been pronounced like Å for centuries all over Scandinavia. 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 Norway in 1917 and in Denmark in 1948. It has been argued that the Å only made its way to official Danish spelling due to anti-German and pro-Scandinavian sentiment after World War II. Danish had been the only language apart from German to use capitalised nouns, but abolished them at the same occasion.

Icelandic and Faroese are the only Scandinavian languages not to use the letter Å. The Old Norse letter á is retained, but has become a diphtong, pronounced [au] in Icelandic and [ɔa] in Faroese.

Transcription

Since Å is a letter with a distinct sound, not an A with an accent, it is best to keep it when referring to Scandinavian words and names in other languages. However, in Danish and Norwegian, Aa is widely known as the old way of writing Å, used until first part of the 20th century, and a fully functional transcription for Å when using a foreign keyboard.

This is not a common alternative in the Swedish language since the Aa spelling was left many centuries ago. A Swedish Å is generally substituted with A, e.g. in internet domain names, but Aa is occasionally seen. The city of Västerås can be seen rendered as Vasteras, Vaesteraas, Vaesteras, Vasteraas, and Vesteraas, but only the original spelling is correct (and will spell the word as it is pronounced).

Use in names

In some names of geographical places, the old Aa spelling is dominating, more often in Denmark than in Norway. Locals of Aalborg and Aabenraa resist the Å, whereas Århus and Ålesund rarely are seen with Aa spelling. Official rules allow both forms in the most common cases, but Å is always correct.

In personal names the bearer of the name uses Aa or Å according to his choice. Most people keep to the traditional Aa style, Aagaard being much more common than Ågård.

Company names are also written as the owner decides. Sometimes the Aa spelling is used to imply a conservative or nostalgic feeling.

Place in alphabet

Correct alphabetisation in Danish and Norwegian places Aa along with Å as the last letter in the alphabet, the sequence being Æ, Ø, Å/Aa.

In the Swedish alphabet, Å is sorted after Z, as the third letter from the end, the sequence being Å, Ä, Ö. In the Finnish alphabet, Å is treated as in Swedish, but its usage is limited to names of Swedish origin.

Å as a word

In the Norwegian, Danish and Swedish languages, å is also a word, meaning a stream or a small river, and thus common in place names. In standard Norwegian and frequently in spoken Swedish and Danish it is also the mark for infinitive: å ta = "to take".

Walloon writing

Å was introduced to some local variants of eastern-Walloon dialect at the beginning of the 20th century, initially to note the same sound as in Danish. Its use quickly spread to all the eastern-Walloon dialects, through the cultural influence of the city of Liège, and covered three different sounds, a long open o, a long close o, or a long a, depending on the local varieties. The use of a single å letter to cover those different pronunciations has been embraced by the new pan-Walloon orthography, that systemizes a unique orthography for words that are the same, regardless of the local phonetic variations.

In non-standardized writings outside the Liège area, words containing the å letter are written with au, â or ô depending on the pronunciation.For example the word måjhon (house) in standardized orthography is written môjo, mâhon, mohone, maujon in dialectal writings.

Istro-Romanian writing

The Istro-Romanian alphabet is based on the standard Romanian alphabet with three additional letters used to mark sounds specific only to this dialect å, ľ and ń. The third sound å is a uniquely IstroRomanian sound close to the English sound wa in water.

Symbol for ångström

The letter "Å" is also used throughout the world as the international symbol for the non-SI unit ångström, a physical unit of length named after the Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Ångström. It is always upper case in this context. Unicode also has encoded U+212B for the Ångström symbol. However, that is 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, and should be seen as a mistake not to be used.

On computers

A Danish keyboard which features Æ, Ø and Å keys.

For computers, when using the ISO 8859-1 or Unicode sets, the codes for "Å" and "å" are respectively 197 and 229, or C5 and E5 in hexadecimal.

In (X)HTML character entity references, required in cases where the letter is not available by ordinary coding, the codes are Å and å; or Å and å,which also can used in any XML application (when the letter is not directly available in the character encoding used).

On an X window system with Compose key enabled, press Compose and then aa, or Compose and then a*.

To type "å" with an US-International keyboard layout on Microsoft Windows, hold the right-Alt and the "w" key, and the Å in the same way with the addition of the Shift key . Or hold the Alt key and type 0197 or 143 on the numeric keypad for "Å", and for "å" hold the Alt key and type 0229 or 134 on the numeric keypad.

To type "Å" with an Apple Computer using a US keyboard layout,hold the Option key and the Shift key simultaneously and type the A key. To type "å" with an Apple Computer, hold the Option key and type the A key.

Ångels baseball team

The logo of the Major League Baseball team now known as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim is a capital "A" with a halo. Due to the resemblence, many Angels fans often type the name as "Ångels". This usage is similar to a heavy metal umlaut. Occaisionally they use "Å" and "å" in other words, such as "Ånåheim", "chåmpionship", and "rålly monkey".

See also

• Ring (diacritic)
• Æ
• Ø
• Ö
• Ä
• Ångström

External links

• The Nordic graphemes FAQ
• The IstroRomanians in Croatia: Alphabet

Categories

Find

Find