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| | A at opensource encyclopedia |
 | | In English, the letter A by itself usual denotes the lax open front unrounded vowel (IPA /æ/), as in pad, the open back unrounded (IPA /ɑ/) or, in concert with a later e, the close-mid front unrounded vowel (IPA /e/), as in ace, due to effects of the Great vowel shift. |
 | | In most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, the letter a denotes either a open central unrounded vowel (IPA /a/), or an open back unrounded vowel (IPA /ɑ/. |
 | | When the Ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they had no use for the glottal stop that the letter had denoted in Phoenician and other Semitic languages, so they used the sign for the vowel /a/, and changed its name to alpha. |
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