A facts for kids
| The Latin alphabet | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | ||
| Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj |
| Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp |
| Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | |
| Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz | ||
A or a is the first letter of the English alphabet. The small letter, a or α, is used as a lower case vowel.
When it is spoken, ā is said as a long a, a diphthong of ĕ and y. A is similar to alpha of the Greek alphabet. That is not surprising, because it stands for the same sound.
"Alpha and omega" (the last letter of the Greek alphabet) means from beginning to the end. In musical notation, the letter A is the symbol of a note in the scale, below B and above G. In binary numbers, the letter A is 01000001.
A is the letter that was used to represent a team in an old TV show, The A-Team. A capital a is written "A". Use a capital a at the start of a sentence if writing.
Where it came from
The letter 'A' was in the Phoenician alphabet's aleph. This symbol came from a simple picture of an ox head.
| Egyptian | Phoenician aleph |
Greek Alpha |
Etruscan A |
Roman/Cyrillic A |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
This Phoenician letter helped make the basic blocks of later types of the letter. The Greeks later modified this letter and used it as their letter alpha. The Greek alphabet was used by the Etruscans in northern Italy, and the Romans later modified the Etruscan alphabet for their own language.
Using the letter
The letter A has six different sounds. It can sound like æ, in the International Phonetic Alphabet, such as the word pad. Other sounds of this letter are in the words father, which developed into another sound, such as in the word ace.
Use in mathematics
In algebra, the letter "A" along with other letters at the beginning of the alphabet is used to represent known quantities.
In geometry, capital A, B, C etc. are used to label line segments, lines, etc. Also, A is typically used as one of the letters to label an angle in a triangle.
Images for kids
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Road sign in Ireland, showing the Irish "Latin alpha" form of "a" in lower and upper case forms.
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Pronunciation of the name of the letter ⟨a⟩ in European languages, note that /a/ and /aː/ can differ phonetically between [a], [ä], [æ] and [ɑ] depending on the language.
See also
In Spanish: A para niños
