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Ă (upper case) or ă (lower case), usually referred to in English as A-breve, is a letter used in standard Romanian language, Vietnamese language and Chuvash language orthographies. In Romanian, it is used to represent the mid-central unrounded vowel, while in Vietnamese it represents the short a sound. It is the second letter of both the Romanian, Vietnamese, and the pre-1972 Malaysian alphabets, after A.
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Ă/ă is also used in several languages for transliteration of Bulgarian letter Ъ/ъ.
Romanian
The sound represented in Romanian by ă is a mid-central vowel /ə/, i.e. schwa. Unlike in English, Catalan or French but like in Indonesian, Bulgarian, Albanian and Afrikaans, it can be stressed. There are words in which it is the only vowel, such as "măr" /mər/ (apple) or "văd" /vəd/ (I see). Additionally, some words which also contain other vowels can have the stress on ă like in the examples "cărțile" /ˈkərt͡sile/ (the books) and "odăi" /oˈdəj/ (rooms).
Vietnamese
Ă is the 2nd letter of the Vietnamese alphabet and represents /a/. Because Vietnamese is a tonal language this letter may have any one of the 5 tonal symbols above or below it (or even no accent at all, since the Vietnamese first tone is identified by the lack of accent marks). See Vietnamese phonology.
Malay
The sound represented in pre-1972 Malaysian orthography by ă is a vowel. It occurred only in the final syllable of the root word such "mată" /matə/ (eye). The letter was replaced in 1972 with a in the New Rumi Spelling.
Pronunciation respelling for English
In some systems for Pronunciation respelling for English including American Heritage Dictionary notation, ă represents the so-called "short A" sound, /æ/.