⟨a⟩

⟨a⟩ is a vowel monograph used in English.

Note, we treat ⟨ar⟩, ⟨aw⟩, ⟨ay⟩ and ⟨al⟩ as separate digraphs. ⟨as⟩ with a silent S.

This has three main pronunciations:

When stressed, it places words into the ᴛʀᴀᴘ lexical set, producing the short A sound, i.e. the ᴛʀᴀᴘ vowel phoneme.

In accents with the ᴛʀᴀᴘ–ʙᴀᴛʜ split, words belonging to the ʙᴀᴛʜ lexical set are pronounced with the ᴘᴀʟᴍ vowel phoneme. In accents without this split, members of this set are also pronounced with the ᴛʀᴀᴘ vowel phoneme.

There are exceptions; in some words, ⟨a⟩ is places words into the ʟᴏᴛ lexical set, pronounced with the ʟᴏᴛ vowel phoneme e.g. swan, quality, yacht, wasp, watch, squabble, waffle due to vowel mutation after /w/.

When forming the peak of an unstressed syllable, ⟨a⟩ goes into the 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮ᴀ lexical set and tends to be reduced to a schwa.

Contrast ⟨a-e⟩ (A with magic E) and ⟨aa⟩.