A (Cyrillic)

Cyrillic letter А
Cyrillic letter А
Phonetic usage:	[a], [ɑ], [ə], [ä], [æ]
Name (Early Cyrillic alphabet):	азъ
Numeric value:	1
Derived from:	Greek letter Alpha (Α α)
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
Non-Slavic letters
Archaic or unused letters
	List of Cyrillic letters; List of Cyrillic multigraphs;
	v; t; e;

А (Azǔ/Азъ)
А (Azǔ/Азъ)
А а
(See below) А
Usage
Writing system	Cyrillic script
Type	Alphabetic
Language of origin	Old Church Slavonic
Sound values	[a]; [ɑ]; [ə] [æ]
In Unicode	U+0410, U+0430
Alphabetical position	1; Numerical value: 1
History
Development	Proto-Canaanite script Α α Ⰰ А а; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Time period	~900 to present
Descendants	• Я
Sisters	A; Α α; א; ا; ܐ; አ; Ա ա; 𐌀 Ａ ᴀ
Transliterations	A (Latin script)
Variations	(See below) А
Other
Associated numbers	1
Writing direction	Left-to-right
	This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

А (А а; italics: A ɑ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents an open central unrounded vowel /ä/, halfway between the pronunciation of ⟨a⟩ in "cat" and "father". The Cyrillic letter А is romanized using the Latin letter A.

History

The Cyrillic letter А was derived directly from the Greek letter Alpha (Α α). In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was азъ (azǔ), meaning the letter "I". In the Cyrillic numeral system, the Cyrillic letter А has a value of 1.

Form

Throughout history, the Cyrillic letter А has had various shapes, but today is standardised on one that looks exactly like the Latin letter A, including the italic and lower case forms.

Usage

In most languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet – such as Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, Macedonian and Montenegrin – the Cyrillic letter А represents the open central unrounded vowel /a/. In Ingush and Chechen the Cyrillic letter А represents both the open back unrounded vowel /ɑ/ and the mid-central vowel /ə/. In Tuvan the letter can be written as a double vowel.^[1]^[2]

Related letters and other similar characters

Computing codes

А (Cyrillic)

Pronunciation of name of Cyrillic 'А'

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Character information
Preview	А		а
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER A		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	1040	U+0410	1072	U+0430
UTF-8	208 144	D0 90	208 176	D0 B0
Numeric character reference	А	А	а	а
Named character reference	&Acy;		&acy;
KOI8-R and KOI8-U	225	E1	193	C1
CP 855	161	A1	160	A0
Windows-1251	192	C0	224	E0
ISO-8859-5	176	B0	208	D0
Mac Cyrillic	128	80	224	E0

References

^ "Tuvan language, alphabet and pronunciation". omniglot.com. Retrieved 14 June 2016.
^ Campbell, George L.; King, Gareth (24 July 2013). Compendium of the World's Languages. Routledge. ISBN 9781136258459. Retrieved 14 June 2016 – via Google Books.