IPA phoneme \æ\

This phonetics article is based on British English and Received Pronunciation. For American English please see **Phoneme /æ/ in General American**.

In Received Pronunciation, the IPA phoneme **/æ/** corresponds to the vowel sound in words like "trap", "hat" and "brand".

In General American **/æ/** corresponds to the vowel sound in words like "trap", "hat" and "brand" and also in "bath", "laugh" and "ask".

The IPA phonetic symbol **[æ]** corresponds to the /æ/ sound as pronounced by an American. The same phoneme has the sound [a] in Received Pronunciation, and that is the controversial notation used by the *Concise Oxford Dictionary*.

In this wiki a broad notation is used. This means that the difference between American [æ] and British [a] is not important, and both pronunciations are rendered as /æ/. Slashes are used for broad notation and brackets are used for narrow notation.

This phoneme is informally called **“short a”** or **the short sound of the letter a**. Better pronounceable names are **the TRAP vowel** and **the vowel of TRAP.**

## Common words

Some common words which practice the pronunciation of **/æ/** include the following:

* act - add - and - ankle - back - bad - band - bank - bat - black - can - carry - fact - family - flat - hand - happen - happy - land - man - match - matter - plan - sad - stand - thank - travel - understand - value - tax - track
* homophones: band - banned; pact - packed

## Spelling

/æ/ is always followed by one or more consonants. In derived words a single consonant is usually doubled (plan, planned; dad, daddy).

 /eɪ/ | information, make, paper | bass *(in music)* | ancient, scarce, strange, table

## Spelling anomalies

* meringue /məˈræŋ/, plaid /plæd/, timbre /ˈtæmbər/

## Heteronyms

* patent

/ˈpætənt/: right to make an invention
/ˈpeɪtənt/: obvious, evident
## Variant pronunciations

* catch /kætʃ, ketʃ*AmE*/

* /ær/, /er/*AmE* or /eər/*AmE*

Approximately three fourths of Americans don't have the sequence /ær/. They pronounce it either /er/ or /eər/. See Mary-marry-merry merger.
## Anticipated pronunciation difficulties depending on L1

### Spanish

See IPA phoneme /ʌ/ § Spanish.

To be able to pronounce **/æ/** there are three schools of thought:

* Practicing the Spanish **"a"** followed rapidly by the **"e"** (however this would result in a diphthong like the one in "eye").
* A better method would be trying to produce a sound in between Spanish **"a"** [a] and Spanish **"e"** [e] at the same time, or opening the mouth to say [a] and trying to pronounce [e].
* The third alternative is to believe the *Concise Oxford Dictionary* (1966) that thinks /æ/ currently sounds [a] in Received Pronunciation. For a discussion see . This would result in sounding /æ/ as Spanish "a" and practicing /ʌ/ as a different vowel, midway between Spanish "o" and Spanish "a".

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 IPA vowel symbols for British English in dictionaries, section 6. /a/ versus /ӕ/

## See also

* Decoding and spelling exercises: /æ/ vs /eɪ/
* Decoding exercises: "arV" and "arrV"
* Pronunciation exercises: /æ/ vs /e/
* Pronunciation exercises: /ʌ/ vs /æ/

## External links

* British Library, Vowel sounds of Received Pronunciation