The letter Å represents various sounds in the Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, North Frisian, Walloon, Chamorro, and Istro-Romanian language alphabets. A letter is an element in an Alphabetic system of writing such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants The Swedish Alphabet consists of the following 29 letters Upper Case A, B, C, D, E, F The Finnish alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, and especially its Swedish extension The Danish and Norwegian Alphabet is based upon the Latin alphabet and has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 (Norwegian and 1955 The Danish and Norwegian Alphabet is based upon the Latin alphabet and has consisted of the following 29 letters since 1917 (Norwegian and 1955 Walloon ( Walon) is a Romance language spoken as a second language by some in Wallonia, Belgium. Chamorro ( Chamoru) is the native language of the Chamorro or Chamoru of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. Istro-Romanian is an Eastern Romance language, or a Dialect of the Romanian language. An alphabet is a standardized set of letters basic written symbols each of which roughly represents a Phoneme, a Spoken language, either Other alphabets using the letter include the Lule Sami, Skolt Sami, and Southern Sami alphabet. Lule Sami (julevsámegiella is a Finno-Ugric, Sami Language spoken in Lule Lappmark i Southern Sami is the south-westernmost of the Sami languages.

Å is often perceived as an A with a ring, interpreting the ring as a diacritical mark. The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is a (eɪ plural A ring Diacritic may appear above or below letters It may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in various contexts A diacritic ( also called a diacritic or diacritical mark, point, or sign, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation 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. In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound Diaeresis or trema See also Diaeresis History Historically the diaeresis mark or trema is far older than the umlaut mark

To many people it is most familiar as the "Ångström sign". An ångström or angstrom (symbol Å) (ˈɔːŋstrəm Swedish: ˈɔ̀ŋstrœm is an internationally recognized non- SI unit of length equal

Scandinavian languages

Closeup on Å, Ä, and Ö on a Swedish/Finnish keyboard.

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 (/oː/) is similar to the 'au' in caught or law. In Danish, the long version is pronounced /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. Received Pronunciation ( RP) is a form of Pronunciation of the English language (specifically British English) which has long been perceived as General American is an accent of American English within American English General American and accents approximating it are contrasted with Southern American

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). Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States

Historically, the letter Å derives from the Old Norse vowel á. Old Norse is the North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age This was a long /aː/ sound, but over time, the vowel developed to an [ɔ](wide o) sound. Omicron or Omikron (uppercase Ο, lowercase ο, literally "small o": Όμικρον o mikron, micron meaning 'small' in contrast 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 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. Norway ( Norwegian: Norge ( Bokmål) or Noreg ( Nynorsk) officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Constitutional Year 1917 ( MCMXVII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar (or a Common year The Kingdom of Denmark ( ˈd̥ænmɑɡ̊ (archaic ˈd̥anmɑːɡ̊ commonly known as Denmark, is a country in the Scandinavian region of northern Europe Year 1948 ( MCMXLVIII) was a Leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the 1948 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. 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. Aalborg ( IPA ˈʌlb̥ɒːˀ is a city in Denmark. Its population as of 2006 is 121540 making it the fourth largest in the country after Copenhagen,

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). An internationalized domain name (

Use in names

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

In some names of geographical places, the old Aa spelling is dominating, 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 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 their 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.

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) - and this is never spelled just Å. Brynjar Aa often Brynjar Å ( July 21 1960 - is a Norwegian Dramatist.

Place in alphabet

The fact that Å is a common letter in Swedish while having no native uses in Finnish has led to its being used as a concise symbol for the Swedish language, as in this campaign to rid Finnish schools of Mandatory Swedish. In Finnish schools Swedish is a mandatory school subject for Finnish-speaking pupils from the 7th through 9th grade (13/14 to 15/16-year-olds

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". ( Ripuarian: Oche, Dutch: Aken, Spanish: Aquisgrán, Italian: Aquisgrana, French, The city of Aabenraa or Åbenrå ( German: Apenrade, aːpənˈʁaːdə is situated at the head of the Aabenraa Fjord an arm of the Little Belt

In the Swedish alphabet, Å is sorted after Z, as the third letter from the end, the sequence being Å, Ä, Ö. The Swedish Alphabet consists of the following 29 letters Upper Case A, B, C, D, E, F Z is the twenty-sixth and last letter of the modern Latin alphabet. " Ä " or " ä " is a character which represents either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets or the letter A with O-Umlaut The glyph O with Umlaut appears in the German alphabet. 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.

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. "Riverine" redirects here For the use of that term in Maritime geography, see there In standard Norwegian and in spoken Swedish it is also the mark for prospective mood: å ta = "to take".

In Norwegian, it is also used as an interjection, eg. "Å Karin, jeg elsker deg (Oh Karin, I love you)". (The Swedish and Danish form usually being åh).

These are just instances of words that happen to be written with one letter (compare English I. )

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. The twentieth century of the Common Era began on 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. Liège (ljɛːʒ Older English: Luick, Walloon: Lidje, German: Lüttich; Latin: Leodium, Dutch 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. The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific Writing system to write the language

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. Istro-Romanian is an Eastern Romance language, or a Dialect of the Romanian language. Romanian or Daco-Romanian ( dated: Rumanian or Roumanian; self designation limba română, ˈlimba roˈmɨnə is a Romance 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. Chamorro ( Chamoru) is the native language of the Chamorro or Chamoru of the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. Guam ( Chamorro: cha Guåhån) officially the Territory of Guam, is an island in the western Pacific Ocean and is an organized unincorporated

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. An ångström or angstrom (symbol Å) (ˈɔːŋstrəm Swedish: ˈɔ̀ŋstrœm is an internationally recognized non- SI unit of length equal Length is the long Dimension of any object The length of a thing is the distance between its ends its linear extent as measured from end to end "Sverige" redirects here For other uses see Sweden (disambiguation and Sverige (disambiguation. A physicist is a Scientist who studies or practices Physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning Anders Jonas Ångström ( August 13, 1814 &ndash June 21, 1874) was a Physicist in Sweden, one It is always upper case in this context. Capital letters or majuscules pronunciation /məˈdʒʌskyuls ˈmædʒəˌskyuls/ in the Roman alphabet A, B, C, D, (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. A character encoding consists of a code that pairs a sequence of characters from a given character set (sometimes incorrectly referred to as Code page

On computers

Danish keyboard with keys for Æ, Ø and Å. Æ ( minuscule: æ) is a Grapheme formed from the letters A and E. The " Ø " ( minuscule: " ø " is a Vowel and a letter used in the Danish, Faroese and Norwegian
On Norwegian keyboards the Æ and Ø trade places.

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. A computer is a Machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions. ISO 8859-1, more formally cited as ISO/IEC 8859-1 is part 1 of ISO/IEC 8859, a standard Character encoding of the Latin alphabet. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's In Mathematics and Computer science, hexadecimal (also base -, hexa, or hex) is a Numeral system with a

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. In the Markup languages SGML, HTML, XHTML and XML, a character entity reference is a reference to a particular kind of named The latter codes can be used in any XML application when the letter is not directly available in the character encoding used. A character encoding consists of a code that pairs a sequence of characters from a given character set (sometimes incorrectly referred to as Code page

On an X window system with Compose key enabled, press Compose and then aa, or Compose and then a*. On some Computer systems a compose key is a key which is designated to signal the Software to interpret the next keystrokes as a combination in order to produce 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. QWERTY keyboardjpg|thumb|right|300px|QWERTY keyboard on a Laptop of 2007]]A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. The shift key is a Modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters 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. For a list of keyboard shortcuts see Table of keyboard shortcuts The Alt key on a computer keyboard is used to change (alternate the function A numeric keypad, or numpad for short is the small palm-sized seventeen key section of a Computer keyboard, usually on the very far right

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. Apple Inc, ( formerly Apple Computer Inc, is an American Multinational corporation with a focus on designing and manufacturing Consumer electronics The 'Option key' is a Modifier key present on Apple keyboards It is located between the Control key and Command key on a typical Mac keyboard The shift key is a Modifier key on a keyboard, used to type capital letters and other alternate "upper" characters To type "å" with an Apple Computer, hold the Option key and type the A key. The 'Option key' is a Modifier key present on Apple keyboards It is located between the Control key and Command key on a typical Mac keyboard

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. A logo ( Greek el λογότυπος = el-Latn logotypos is a graphical element ( Ideogram, Symbol, Emblem, Icon, Sign) The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are a professional baseball team based in Anaheim, California. Due to the resemblance, many Angels fans often type the name as "Ångels". This usage is similar to a heavy metal umlaut. The heavy metal umlaut is the gratuitous or decorative use of an umlaut over letters in the name of a heavy metal band such as 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. Lambda (uppercase Λ, lowercase λ; Λάμβδα or el Λάμδα Lamda is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet.

In Finnish, writing 'o' as 'å' is used as a comical device for the Swedish language, in a manner similar to using faux Cyrillic for Russian. Faux Cyrillic, pseudo-Cyrillic, pseudo-Russian or faux Russian Typography is the use of Cyrillic letters in Latin text Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages

See also

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

External links

• The Nordic graphemes FAQ
• The IstroRomanians in Croatia: Alphabet
• The Local: Sweden to phase out Å, Ä and Ö (April Fool's joke)