Letter of the Cyrillic script
Not to be confused with the Latin
A or the Greek
Α .
Letter А, page fromElisabeth Boehm 'sAzbuka А (А а; italics:А а orА а ; italics:А а Cyrillic script . It commonly represents anopen central unrounded vowel /ä/ , halfway between the pronunciation of⟨a⟩ in "cat" and "father". The Cyrillic letter А isromanized using theLatin letter A .
The Cyrillic letter А was derived directly from theGreek letter Alpha (Α α Early Cyrillic alphabet its name wasазъ (azǔ), meaning thepersonal pronoun "I". In theCyrillic numeral system , the Cyrillic letter А has a value of 1.
Throughout history, the Cyrillic letter А has had various shapes, but today is standardized on one thatlooks exactly like the Latin letter A, including theitalic andlower case forms.
In most languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet – such asBulgarian ,Ukrainian ,Belarusian ,Russian ,Rusyn ,Serbian ,Macedonian andMontenegrin – the Cyrillic letter А represents theopen central unrounded vowel /a/ . InIngush andChechen the Cyrillic letter А represents both theopen back unrounded vowel /ɑ/ when stressed and themid-central vowel /ə/ when unstressed. InTurkic languages that use theCyrillic script it represents theopen back unrounded vowel /ɑ/ , with the exception ofVolga Tatar , in which it represents theopen back rounded vowel /ɒ/ , and Uzbek, in which it represents thenear-open front unrounded vowel /æ/ . In languages that contrastvowel length the letter can be written as adouble vowel .[ 1]
Related letters and other similar characters [ edit ] Pronunciation of name of Cyrillic 'А'
А а
Italics indicate that the language no longer uses Cyrillic
Cyrillic alphabets Cyrillization of
Primary letters Other Slavic letters Non-Slavic letters Archaic Slavic letters Archaic non-Slavic letters Archaic diacritics Combinations of Cyrillic letters
