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Ae ligature)
"Æ", or "æ", is a vowel and a letter used in the Icelandic, Danish, Faroese and Norwegian alphabets.
It was also used in Old English and in mediæval and early modern Latin. Modern English still contains several words that use æ, such as Encyclopædia, but it is falling into disuse. The origin of the letter is a ligature for AE.
In Icelandic, Æ is a diphthong (IPA [ai]). In Danish and Norwegian, Æ is now a unique vowel (IPA [ɛ]), not a diphthong, umlaut, or ligature. The same function is served in Swedish by the letter "Ä", and in German by the letter A with Umlaut.
In Old English, the ligature was used to denote a sound intermediate between those of "A" and "E" (IPA [æ]), very much like the short "A" of cat in many dialects of modern English.
In this context, the name of the letter is Æsc (Ash in modern English, meaning the tree), after the name of the corresponding letter in the Futharc.
In Latin, the combination denotes a diphthong (IPA [ae̯]) that had a value similar to the long "I" in most dialects of modern English.
It was used both in native words (spelled with "AI" before the 2nd century BC) and in borrowings from Greek words having the diphthong "AI" ("ΑΙ").
Both classical and modern practice is to write the letters separately, but the ligature was used in medieval and early modern writings, in part because "Æ" was reduced to a simple long vowel (IPA [e:]) in late Latin.
The symbol [æ] is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to denote the sound of the Old English letter, an unrounded, semi-open front vowel, as in the modern English word cat.
In this context, it is always lowercase.
For computers, when using the Latin-1 or Unicode sets, the codes for 'Æ' and 'æ' are respectively 198 and 230, or C6 and E6 in hexadecimal.
In HTML, you can also use the HTML character entity references Æ and æ.
The progressive metal band Tool used an Æ for the title of their third album, Ænima, and the song Ænema off of that album. This is similar to the usage of the heavy metal umlaut.
See also
da:Æ
eo:Æ
is:Æ
ja:Æ
no:Æ
pt:Æ
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