Examples are the Baltic languages (e.g. Latvian), Polynesian languages, including Māori and Moriori, some romanizations of Japanese, Persian, Pashto, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (which represents a long A sound) and Arabic, and some Latin texts (especially for learners).

It is used in some orthography-based transcriptions of English to represent the diphthong /eɪ/ (see Vowel length § Traditional long and short vowels in English orthography).

In the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration, Ā represents the open back unrounded vowel "आ", not to be confused with the similar Devanagari character for the mid central vowel, अ.

In languages other than Sanskrit and related South Asian languages,[1] Ā is sorted with other A's and is not considered a separate letter.

The macron is only considered when sorting words that are otherwise identical.