Ä.
A letter of the German alphabet, written in the Latin script, an umlauted version of A.
Meaning & usage
A letter of the German alphabet, written in the Latin script, an umlauted version of A.
Where this word comes from
* (letter) From Alemannic Middle High German aͤ, a representation of secondary umlaut [æ]. In Early Modern German, the letter spread to Central German, which did not have a special phoneme for secondary umlaut. Therefore, ä was seen there as a marker of umlaut as such, and was used analogously. * (sound) Middle High German distinguished up to five stressed e-vowels: [æ], [ɛ], [ɛː], [e], [eː]. Through open-syllable lengthening, mergers, and analogy, this system was not just reduced but entirely altered. 19th-century Standard German generally retained only one short vowel, but distinguished [ɛː] from [eː]. All long ⟨ä⟩s were by then usually pronounced [ɛː], while ⟨e⟩ was [ɛː] in some words, [eː] in others. The choice between these, however, varied greatly from region to region, and was entirely absent in many Low German areas. Theodor Siebs therefore (consistently but rather arbitrarily) restricted [ɛː] to the spelling ⟨ä⟩ in his codification of stage and broadcasting German. Unintendedly, this reinforced the tendency towards total merger as the dialectal systems of distinction were disturbed.
The letter Ä.
Where this word comes from
* (letter) From Alemannic Middle High German aͤ, a representation of secondary umlaut [æ]. In Early Modern German, the letter spread to Central German, which did not have a special phoneme for secondary umlaut. Therefore, ä was seen there as a marker of umlaut as such, and was used analogously. * (sound) Middle High German distinguished up to five stressed e-vowels: [æ], [ɛ], [ɛː], [e], [eː]. Through open-syllable lengthening, mergers, and analogy, this system was not just reduced but entirely altered. 19th-century Standard German generally retained only one short vowel, but distinguished [ɛː] from [eː]. All long ⟨ä⟩s were by then usually pronounced [ɛː], while ⟨e⟩ was [ɛː] in some words, [eː] in others. The choice between these, however, varied greatly from region to region, and was entirely absent in many Low German areas. Theodor Siebs therefore (consistently but rather arbitrarily) restricted [ɛː] to the spelling ⟨ä⟩ in his codification of stage and broadcasting German. Unintendedly, this reinforced the tendency towards total merger as the dialectal systems of distinction were disturbed.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.