Å

The letter Å represents various sounds in the Swedish, Finnish (although no native Finnish words contain the letter å), 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. It developed as a form of semi-ligature of an "A" with another smaller "a" above it to denote a long a, similar to how the umlaut mark ¨ is developed from a small "e" written above the letter in question.

To those who do not use it in their alphabet, it is most familiar as the "Ångström sign".

Scandinavian languages

The letter "Å" in Scandinavian alphabets represents two sounds, one short and one long.
*The short version ( IPA|/ɔ/) is similar in quality to the vowel as originally pronounced in the words "don" or "down".
*In Norwegian and Swedish, the long version (IPA|/oː/) is similar to the 'au' in "caught" or "law". In Danish, the long version is pronounced IPA|/ɔː/, similar to the vowel as pronounced in the words "doll" by speakers of Received Pronunciation (RP) and some conservative varieties of General American; or even more close to ô of French "Rhône".

Origin

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

Historically, the letter Å derives from the Old Norse vowel "á". This was a long IPA|/aː/ sound, but over time, the vowel developed to an IPA| [ɔ] sound. Medieval writing often used doubled letters for long vowels, and the vowel continued to be written Aa. In Old Swedish the use of the ligatures Æ and Œ that represented the sounds IPA| [æ] and IPA| [ø] respectively were gradually replaced by new letters. Instead of using ligatures, a minuscule E was placed above the letters A and O to create new graphemes. These would later evolve into the modern letters Ä and Ö, where the E was simplified into two dots. This construction was also applied to construct a new grapheme where an "aa" previously had been used. A minuscule O was placed on top of an A to create a new letter. It was first used in print in the "Gustav Vasa Bible" that was published in 1541 and replaced Aa in the 16th century. [Pettersson (1996), p. 139]

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, 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 capitalized nouns, but abolished them at the same occasion. In a few names of cities or towns, the old spelling has been retained, e.g. Aalborg.

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 diphthong, pronounced [au] in Icelandic and [ɔa] in Faroese. The short variation of Faroese á is pronounced [ɔ] , though.

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. Due to technical troubles with the Å. Å is in internet addresses also mostly spelled as Aa. In Swedish, where this transcription is less common, Å is often rendered simply A in internet addresses (internationalized domain names are still fairly uncommon).

Use in names

Before 1917 some Norwegian place names could consist of three or four connecting "a"s: for instance " _no. Haaa" (now " _no. Håa", a river) and " _no. Blaaaasen" ("Blååsen", 'the blå/blue ås/hill').

In some names of geographical places, the old " _no. Aa" spelling is dominating, more often in Denmark than in Norway (where it has been abolished in official use since 1917). Locals of " _no. Aalborg" and " _no. Aabenraa" resist the Å, whereas " _no. Århus" and " _no. 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 their choice. Most people keep to the traditional Aa style, " _no. Aagaard" being much more common than " _no. Ågård".

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

It is also common for people whose last name begins with "Aa" to use this in their initials. For instance, a person named Hans Aaberg could therefore use the initials "H.Aa." instead of "H.A.".

About 240 persons in Norway (2007) have "Aa" as a family name (for instance the writer Brynjar Aa); it is never spelled as "Å".

Place in alphabet

Correct alphabetization in Danish and Norwegian places "Aa" along with "Å" as the last letter in the alphabet, the sequence being Æ, Ø, Å/Aa. Unless manually corrected, a sorting algorithms of programs localised for Danish or Norwegian will place e.g. "Aaron" after "Zorro". In Danish / Norwegian books, a distinction is made between foreign and local words so e.g. the German city Aachen would be listed under "A" but the Danish city "Aabenraa" would be listed after "Z".

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, it is carried over from the Swedish alphabet, but has no native use and is treated as in Swedish, but its usage is limited to names of Swedish, Danish or Norwegian origin.

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 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 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 letter å represents the [ɔ] sound as in Scandinavian languages.

Chamorro

"Å" and "å" are also used in the practical orthography of the Chamorro, a language indigenous to the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. The capital of Guam is also called "Hagånta".

Symbol for ångström

The letter "Å" (U+00C5) 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. (Symbols for units named for persons are generally upper-case.) 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.Fact|date=May 2008

On computers

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. The latter codes can be 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. Alternatively, 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.

False and playful uses of Å

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 resemblance, many Angels fans often type the name as "Ångels". This usage is similar to a heavy metal umlaut. Occasionally they use "Å" and "å" in other words, such as "Ånåheim", "chåmpionship", and "rålly monkey". This use of "Å" and "å" looks very strange to speakers of Scandinavian languages, as these words approximately would be pronounced "Ongels", "Onoheim", "chompionship" and "rolly monkey".

Similarly, the logo of the TV series Stargate SG-1 resembles "STARGÅTE", yet a more accurate description of the character standing for the second 'a' would be a upper case lambda (Λ) with a ring above it.

In Finnish, writing "o" as "å" is used as a comical device to suggest the Swedish language, in a similar manner to the use of faux Cyrillic to suggest Russian.

See also

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

Notes

References

*Pettersson, Gertrud (1996), "Svenska språket under sjuhundra år: en historia om svenskan och dess utforskande", Lund: Studentlitteratur, ISBN 91-44-48221-3

External links

* [http://www.lysator.liu.se/nordic/scn/faq18.html The Nordic graphemes FAQ]
* [http://www.istro-romanian.net/alphabet.html The IstroRomanians in Croatia: Alphabet]
* [http://www.thelocal.se/6867/ The Local: Sweden to phase out Å, Ä and Ö (April Fool's joke)]