Pronunciation of English ⟨a⟩

There are a variety of pronunciations in Modern English and in historical forms of the language for words spelled with the letter ⟨a⟩.

As a result of the Great Vowel Shift, the long [aː] of face was raised, initially to [æː] and later to [ɛː].

Today there is much regional variation in the realization of this vowel; in RP there has been a recent trend for it to be lowered again to a fully open [a].

These trends, allowed to operate unrestrictedly, would have left standard English without any vowels in the [a] or [aː] area by the late 17th century.

However, this putative gap was filled by the following special developments: The [aː] of the late 17th century has generally backed to [ɑː] in several varieties of contemporary English, for example in Received Pronunciation.

[7] After 1700 it was raised even further, and then diphthongized, leading to the modern standard pronunciation /eɪ/, found in words like name, face, bacon.

Before (historic) /r/, in words like square, the vowel has become [ɛə] (often practically [ɛː]) in modern RP, and [ɛ] in General American.

In late Middle English, pairs such as cat, cart, were pronounced [kat], [kart] respectively, distinguished only by the presence or absence of [r].

In non-rhotic accents, the /r/ of cart has been lost; in modern RP the word is pronounced /kɑːt/, distinguished from cat only by the quality and length of the vowel.

Learned words, neologisms (such as gas, first found in the late 17th century), and Latinate or Greek borrowings were rarely broadened.

[17] In general, all these words, to the extent that they existed in Middle English, had /a/ ("short A" as in trap) which was broadened to [aː].

The exceptions are: The words castle, fasten and raspberry are special cases where subsequent sound changes have altered the conditions initially responsible for lengthening.

In the Boston area there has historically been a tendency to copy RP lengthening which perhaps reached its zenith in the 1930s[25] but has since receded in the face of general North American norms.

In Scottish and Ulster English the great majority of speakers have no distinction between TRAP and PALM (the Sam–psalm merger).

(One might compare the different ways in which modern French loanwords like envelope are pronounced in contemporary varieties of English.)

The table below shows the pronunciation of many of these words, classified according to the lexical sets of John Wells: TRAP for /æ/, BATH for RP /ɑː/ vs. General American /æ/, PALM for /ɑː/, THOUGHT for /ɔː/, FACE for /eɪ/.

For example, from Sandre, a Norman French form of the name Alexander, the Modern English surnames Sanders and Saunders are both derived.

In the early days of TRAP-lowering, the fully open pronunciation of TRAP was typically heard as a merger regardless of the exact phonetic realization of STRUT.

Thus, Cockney may be an example of a language variety that contrasts near-front and fully front vowels of the same height, roundedness and length, though the former tends to undergo lengthening before /d/ (see bad–lad split).

[34] A three-way merger of /æ/, /ʌ/ and /ɑː/ is a common pronunciation error among L2 speakers of English whose native language is Italian, Spanish or Catalan.

Daniel Jones noted for RP that some speakers had a phonemic contrast between a long and a short /æ/, which he wrote as /æː/ and /æ/, respectively.

Thus, in An outline of English phonetics (1962, ninth edition, Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons) he noted that sad, bad generally had /æː/ but lad, pad had /æ/.

[citation needed] Outside of England, can meaning 'able to' remains /kæn/, whereas the noun can 'container' or the verb can 'to put into a container' is /kæːn/; this is similar to the situation found in /æ/ raising in some varieties of American English.

Other minimal pairs found in Australian English include 'Manning' (the surname) /ˈmænɪŋ/ and 'manning' (the present participle and gerund of the verb 'to man') /ˈmæːnɪŋ/ as well as 'planet' /ˈplænət/ versus 'plan it' /ˈplæːnət/.

Experimental recordings of RP-speaking Cambridge University undergraduates has indicated that after coarticulatory effects are taken into account, words such as bag, that, gab, Ann, ban, damp, mad, bad, and sad may have slightly longer /æː/ vowels than relatively shorter words such as lad, snag, pad, Pam, and plan.

[40] This casts doubt on its status as a true phonemic split among RP-speakers, and has been described instead as diachronically stable, lexically specific sub-phonemic variation.

The realization of this "tense" (as opposed to "lax") /æ/ varies from [ɛː] to [ɛə] to [eə] to [ɪə], depending on the speaker's regional accent.

The most commonly tensed variant of /æ/ throughout North American English is when it appears before nasal consonants (thus, for example, in fan as opposed to fat).

[42] Many foreign borrowed words such as taco, llama, drama, piranha, Bahamas, pasta, Bach, pecan, pajamas etc.