Å

The letter Å represents various sounds in the alphabets used for Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish (although no native Finnish words contain the letter å), North Frisian, Walloon, Chamorro, Istro-Romanian, Lule Sami, Skolt Sami, Southern Sami and the Alemannic and Bavarian-Austrian dialects of German. 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 con... more

The letter Å represents various sounds in the alphabets used for Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish (although no native Finnish words contain the letter å), North Frisian, Walloon, Chamorro, Istro-Romanian, Lule Sami, Skolt Sami, Southern Sami and the Alemannic and Bavarian-Austrian dialects of German. 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 a symbol for Ångström. The letter Å in Scandinavian alphabets represents two sounds, one short and one long. In historical linguistics, the Å-sound originally had the same origin as the long /aː/ sound in German Aal and Haar ... less