In English, ‹a› by itself frequently denotes the near-open front unrounded vowel (/æ/) as in pad, the open back unrounded vowel (/ɑː/) as in father, or, in concert with a later orthographic vowel, the diphthong /eɪ/ as in ace and major, due to effects of the great vowel shift.
In most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, ‹a› denotes an open central unrounded vowel (/a/). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, variants of ‹a› denote various vowels. In X-SAMPA, capital ‹A› denotes the open back unrounded vowel and lowercase ‹a› denotes the open front unrounded vowel.
‹A› is the third common used letter in English, and the second most common in Spanish and French. In one study, on average, about 3.68% of letters used in English tend to be ‹a›s, while the number is 6.22% in Spanish and 3.95% in French.[3]
‹A› is often used to denote something or someone of a better or more prestigious quality or status: A-, A or A+, the best grade that can be assigned by teachers for students' schoolwork; A grade for clean restaurants; A-List celebrities, etc. The number 1 is used in a similar way.
A turned ‹a› (‹ɐ›) is used by the International Phonetic Alphabet for the near-open central vowel, while a turned capital ‹A› (‹∀›) is used in predicate logic to specify universal quantification.
