/ɛː/ is frome before certain consonants; from analogical umlaut of/aː/; from Middle High Germanæ in some dialects; in Moselle Franconian from all cases where Ripuarian has/œː/ (seeÖ); in eastern Moselle Franconian from Middle High Germanei, öu.
when there is a special reason to specify that the vowel is/ɛ/, not/e/:brängeorbrenge (because Germanbringen suggests/e/).
/œy̯/,/øy̯/ may be represented byeu oräu. The latter of these is used when the German cognate hasäu orau. It may or may not be used when there is a related word withau:däueordeue (because of relatedDau).
Derived fromSwedishÄ and/or its origin,GermanÄ, in which the umlaut (two dots) were originally a lowercasee, first placed to the side and later on top ofa/A to signify fronting of the vowel via Germanic umlaut. This letter was already used in the earliest known Finnish writings in the 16th century, where it in fraktur (blackletter) still clearly displayed the lowercasee (aͤ). Over time, its usage became more regular as the Finnish spelling did, and thee simplified into two vertical lines and then two dots, as in the other regions where the letter is used.
(letter) FromAlemannicMiddle High Germanaͤ, a representation of secondary umlaut[æ]. In Early Modern German, the letter spread toCentral German, which did not have a special phoneme for secondary umlaut. Therefore,ä was seen there as a marker of umlaut as such, and was used analogously.
(sound) Middle High German distinguished up to five stressed e-vowels:[æ],[ɛ],[ɛː],[e],[eː]. Through open-syllable lengthening, mergers, and analogy, this system was not just reduced but entirely altered. 19th-century Standard German generally retained only one short vowel, but distinguished[ɛː] from[eː]. All long ⟨ä⟩s were by then usually pronounced[ɛː], while ⟨e⟩ was[ɛː] in some words,[eː] in others. The choice between these, however, varied greatly from region to region, and was entirely absent in manyLow German areas.Theodor Siebs therefore (consistently but rather arbitrarily) restricted[ɛː] to the spelling ⟨ä⟩ in his codification of stage and broadcasting German. Unintendedly, this reinforced the tendency towards total merger as the dialectal systems of distinction were disturbed.
The distinction between long/ɛː/ and/eː/ is maintained in some regions, including Switzerland and most of western Germany. In many other regions the two are merged in normal speech, though speakers may nevertheless distinguish them in individual words (such as conditional forms of strong verbs, e.g.,gäbe) and in enunciation. This usually also includes the monosyllabic pronunciation of the letter name ⟨Ä⟩ itself.
↑1.01.1Kimmo Granqvist (2011), “Aakkoset [Alphabet]”, inLyhyt Suomen romanikielen kielioppi [Consice grammar of Finnish Romani][1] (in Finnish), Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten keskus,→ISBN,→ISSN, retrieved6 February 2022, pages1-2
The short vowel[æ] is speltä (rather thane) when it occurs as an umlaut ininflections. Otherwise its use is chiefly dependent on the spelling of the Germancognate.Ä is used when the German word has one ofa, ä, o, ö, thus e.g.,Fläsch andFräsch (GermanFlasche,Frosch). If no German cognate exists,ä is used when there is a closely related Luxembourgish word witha.
The long vowel[ɛː] is always speltä. In native Luxembourgish words this sound occurs only beforer as anallophone of/eː/. Elsewhere it must be interpreted as a distinct phoneme/ɛː/, which is restricted to borrowings.
^Marcel Courthiade (2009), “DECISION : "THE ROMANI ALPHABET"”, in Melinda Rézműves, editor,Morri angluni rromane ćhibǎqi evroputni lavustik = Első rromani nyelvű európai szótáram : cigány, magyar, angol, francia, spanyol, német, ukrán, román, horvát, szlovák, görög [My First European-Romani Dictionary: Romani, Hungarian, English, French, Spanish, German, Ukrainian, Romanian, Croatian, Slovak, Greek] (overall work in Hungarian and English), Budapest: Fővárosi Onkormányzat Cigány Ház--Romano Kher,→ISBN, page499
^Yūsuke Sumi (2018), “ä”, inニューエクスプレス ロマ（ジプシー）語 [New Express Romani (Gypsy)] (in Japanese), Tokyo: Hakusuisha,→ISBN, page16
“Ä”, inSlovníkový portál Jazykovedného ústavu Ľ. Štúra SAV [Dictionary portal of the Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics, Slovak Academy of Science] (in Slovak),https://slovnik.juls.savba.sk,2003–2025
Derived fromGermanÄ, with its corresponding pronunciation, which is still used by some speakers, however, the majority of speakers have vernacularized the pronunciation to a long close-mid vowel regardless of the initial pronunciation.
The wordhaͤnnes(“hers”) from year 1786, where the now obsolete variationAͤ is still used.
First attested in 1495.[1] Originally a ligature of A and E. During the 16th century, the letter began to be written as an A with a lower case e on top (Aͤ andaͤ respectively). During the first decades of the 18th century, the use of umlaut (Ää) emerged.
