Pronunciation of English ⟨a⟩

Overview

Late Middle English had two phonemes /a/ and /aː/, differing only in length. The /a/ ("short A") was found in words such as cat [kat] and trap [trap], and also before /r/ in words such as start [start]. The /aː/ ("long A") was found in words such as face [faːs], and before /r/ in words such as scare [skaːr]. This long A was generally a result of Middle English open syllable lengthening. For a summary of the various developments in Old and Middle English that led to these vowels, see English historical vowel correspondences.

As a result of the Great Vowel Shift, the long [aː] of face was raised, initially to [æː] and later to [ɛː]. After 1700 it was raised even further, and then diphthongized, leading to the modern standard pronunciation /eɪ/. Additionally, the short [a] of trap was fronted to [æ]; this change became accepted in standard speech during the 17th century. 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.

The following table shows some developments of Middle English /a/ in Received Pronunciation. The word gate, which derived from Middle English /aː/, has also been included for comparison.

The table below shows the results of these developments in some contemporary varieties of English:

Old and Middle English

Old English (OE) had an open back vowel /ɑ/, written ⟨a⟩, as well as a front vowel /æ/, written ⟨æ⟩. These had corresponding long vowels /ɑː/ and /æː/ but were not normally distinguished from the short vowels in spelling although modern editions of Old English texts often mark them as ⟨ā⟩ and ⟨ǣ⟩. In the low vowel area, there was also a pair of short and long diphthongs, /æɑ/ and /æːɑ/, written ⟨ea⟩ (the long one also ⟨ēa⟩ in modern editions).

In Middle English (ME), the short /ɑ/, /æ/ and /æɑ/ became merged into a single vowel /a/, written ⟨a⟩. In some cases (before certain pairs of consonants) the corresponding long vowels also developed into this short /a/. Mostly, however, OE /æː/ and /æːɑ/ were raised to become Middle English /ɛː/ (the sound that often gives ⟨ea⟩ in modern spelling), and OE /ɑː/ was raised and rounded to become ME /ɔː/ (often ⟨o⟩, ⟨oa⟩ in modern spelling). For more details, see English historical vowel correspondences.

During the Middle English period, like other short vowels, the /a/ was lengthened in open syllables. Later, with the gradual loss of unstressed endings, many such syllables ceased to be open, but the vowel remained long.

For example, the word name originally had two syllables, the first being open, so the /a/ was lengthened; later, the final vowel was dropped, leaving a closed syllable with a long vowel. As a result, there were now two phonemes /a/ and /aː/, both written ⟨a⟩, the long one being often indicated by a silent ⟨e⟩ after the following consonant (or, in some cases, by a pronounced vowel after the following consonant, as in naked and bacon).

Further development of Middle English /aː/

As a result of the Great Vowel Shift, the long /aː/ that resulted from Middle English open syllable lengthening was raised, initially to [æː] and later to [ɛː]. [æː] "seems to have been the normal pronunciation in careful speech before 1650, and [ɛː] after 1650". After 1700 it was raised even further, and then diphthongized, leading to the modern standard pronunciation /eɪ/, found in words like name, face, bacon. However, some accents, in the north of England and in Scotland, for example, retain a monophthongal pronunciation of this vowel, while other accents have a variety of different diphthongs.

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

Changes in realization of /a/

Independently of the development of the long vowel, the short /a/ came to be fronted and raised to [æ]. This change was mostly confined to "vulgar or popular" speech in the 16th century, but it gradually replaced the more conservative [a] in the 17th century, and was "generally accepted by careful speakers by about 1670".

This vowel (that of trap, cat, man, bad, etc.) is now normally denoted as /æ/. In present-day RP, however, it has lowered to a fully front [a]. Such a quality is also found in the accents of northern England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the Caribbean. In North America, however, there is a trend towards tensing (raising) of this vowel. Raised pronunciations are also found in Southern Hemisphere English, and are also associated with Cockney. For the possibility of phonemic length differentiation, see bad–lad split, below.

Development of the new long A

In Modern English, a new phoneme /ɑː/ developed that did not exist in Middle English. The phoneme /ɑː/ comes from three sources: the word father lengthening from /a/ to /aː/ for an unknown reason (thus splitting from gather); the compensatory lengthening of the short /a/ in words like calm, palm, psalm when /l/ was lost in this environment; and the lengthening of /a/ before /r/ in words like car, card, hard, part, etc. In most dialects that developed the broad A class, words containing it joined this new phoneme /ɑː/ as well. The new phoneme also became common in onomatopoeic words like baa, ah, ha ha, as well as in foreign borrowed words like spa, taco, llama, drama, piranha, Bahamas, pasta, Bach, many of which vary between /ɑː/ and /æ/ among different dialects of English.

Some of these developments are discussed in detail in the following sections.

Before /r/

In late Middle English, pairs such as cat, cart, were pronounced [kat], [kart] respectively, distinguished only by the presence or absence of [r]. However, by the late 17th century they were also distinguished by the quality and length of the vowel. In cat, the vowel had been fronted to /kæt/, while in cart it had been lengthened to /kaːrt/. This latter change seems to have first occurred in the dialects of southern England in the early 15th century, but did not affect Standard English until the later 17th century. It has affected most varieties of contemporary English, which have distinct vowels in pairs such as cat, cart. 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.

This lengthening occurred when /a/ was followed by non-pre-vocalic /r/; it did not generally apply before intervocalic /r/ (when the /r/ was followed by another vowel). Hence the first vowel of carrot and marry has normally remained the same as that of cat (but see the mary–marry–merry merger). However, inflected forms and derivatives of words ending in (historic) /r/ generally inherit the lengthened vowel, so words like barring and starry have /ɑː/ as do bar and star.

Before fricatives

Unlike lengthening before nonprevocalic /r/, which applied universally in Standard English, lengthening, or broadening, before fricatives was inconsistent and sporadic. This seems to have first occurred in the dialects of Southern England between about 1500 and 1650. It penetrated into Standard English from these dialects around the mid-17th century.

The primary environment which favored broadening was before preconsonantal or morpheme-final voiceless fricatives /f, θ, s/. The voiceless fricative /ʃ/ has never promoted broadening in Standard English in words like ash and crash. There is, however, evidence that such broadening did occur in dialects.

Once broadening affected a particular word, it tended to spread by analogy to its inflectional derivatives. For example, from pass ([pʰaːs]) there was also passing [ˈpʰaːsɪŋ]. This introduced broadening into the environment _sV, from which it was otherwise excluded (compare passage which is not an inflectional form, and was never affected by broadening).

In a phenomenon going back to Middle English, [f, θ] alternate with their voiced equivalents [v, ð]. For example, late Middle English path [paθ] alternated with paths [paðz]. When broadening applied to words such as path, it naturally extended to these derivatives: thus when [pʰaθ] broadened to [pʰaːθ], [pʰaðz] also broadened to [pʰaːðz]. This introduced broadening into the environment before a voiced fricative.

Broadening affected Standard English extremely inconsistently. It seems to have been favored when /a/ was adjacent to labial consonants or /r/. It is apparent that it occurred most commonly in short words, especially monosyllables, that were common and well-established in English at the time broadening took place (c. 1500–1650). Words of 3 or more syllables were hardly ever subject to broadening. Learned words, neologisms (such as gas, first found in the late 17th century), and Latinate or Greek borrowings were rarely broadened.

A particularly interesting case is that of the word father. In late Middle English this was generally pronounced [ˈfaðər], thus rhyming with gather [ˈɡaðər]. Broadening of father is notable both in two respects:

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the broadening of father as "anomalous". Dobson, however, sees broadening in father as due to the influence of the adjacent /f/ and /r/ combined. Rather and lather appear to have been subject to broadening later, and in fewer varieties of English, by analogy with father.

The table below represents the results of broadening before fricatives in contemporary Received Pronunciation.

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 castle and fasten, the /t/ was pronounced, according to a slight majority of 16th and 17th century sources. In raspberry we find /s/ rather than /z/.

The pattern of lengthening shown here for Received Pronunciation is generally found in southern England, the Caribbean, and the Southern hemisphere (parts of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa). In North America, with the possible exception of older Boston accents, broadening is found only in father (the success of broadening in this word alone in North America unexplained) and pasta (which follows the general pattern for recent Italian loanwords, cf. mafia). In the Boston area there has historically been a tendency to copy RP lengthening which perhaps reached its zenith in the 1930s but has since receded in the face of general North American norms.

In Irish English broadening is found only in father (which may, however, also have the FACE vowel). In Scottish and Ulster English the great majority of speakers have no distinction between TRAP and PALM (the Sam–psalm merger). In Welsh English Wells finds broadening generally only in father, with some variation. In the north of England, broadening is found only in father and usually half and master.

Before nasals

There was a class of Middle English words in which /au/ varied with /a/ before a nasal. These are nearly all loanwords from French, in which uncertainty about how to realize the nasalization of the French vowel resulted in two varying pronunciations in English. (One might compare the different ways in which modern French loanwords like envelope are pronounced in contemporary varieties of English.)

Words with Middle English with the /au/ diphthong generally developed to [ɒː] in Early Modern English (e.g. paw, daughter). However, in some of the words with the /a ~ au/ alternation, especially short words in common use, the vowel instead developed into a long A. In words like change and angel, this development preceded the Great Vowel Shift, and so the resulting long A followed the normal development to modern /eɪ/. In other cases, however, the long A appeared later, and thus did not undergo the Great Vowel Shift, but instead merged with the long A that had developed before /r/ and some fricatives (as described above). Thus words like dance and example have come to be pronounced (in modern RP, although mostly not in General American) with the /ɑː/ vowel of start and bath.

Words in this category may therefore have ended up with a variety of pronunciations in modern standard English: /æ/ (where the short A pronunciation survived), /ɑː/ (where the pronunciation with lengthened A was adopted), /ɔː/ (where the normal development of the AU diphthong was followed), and /eɪ/ (where the A was lengthened before the Great Vowel Shift). 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/. It should be noted that while these words were often spelled with both ⟨a⟩ and ⟨au⟩ in Middle English, the current English spelling generally reflects the pronunciation, with ⟨au⟩ used only for those words which have /ɔː/; one common exception is aunt.

* Not a French loanword

In some cases, both the /a/ and the /au/ forms have survived into modern English. For example, from Sandre, a Norman French form of the name Alexander, the modern English surnames Sanders and Saunders are both derived.

Trap–bath split

The trap–bath split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in the southern and mainstream varieties of English in England (including Received Pronunciation), in the Southern Hemisphere accents of English (Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English), and also to a lesser extent in older Boston English, by which the Early Modern English phoneme /æ/ was lengthened in certain environments and ultimately merged with the long /ɑː/ of father. (Wells 1982: 100–1, 134, 232–33) Similar changes took place in words with ⟨o⟩; see lot–cloth split.

In this context, the lengthened vowel in words such as bath, laugh, grass, chance in accents affected by the split is referred to as a broad A (also, in the UK, long A). Phonetically, the vowel is [ɑː] in Received Pronunciation (RP); in some other accents, including many Australian and all New Zealand accents, it is a fronter vowel ([ɐː] or [aː]), and it may be a rounded [ɒː] in South African English. In accents unaffected by the split, these words usually have the same vowel as words like cat, trap, man, the short A or flat A.

The sound change originally occurred in southern England, and ultimately changed the sound of [æ] to [ɑː] in some words in which the former sound appeared before [f, s, θ, ns, nt, ntʃ, mpl], leading to RP [pɑːθ] for path and [sɑːmpl] for sample, etc. The sound change did not occur before other consonants; thus accents affected by the split preserve /æ/ in words like cat. (See the Variations section below for more details on the words affected.) The lengthening of the bath vowel began in the 17th century but was "stigmatised as a Cockneyism until well into the 19th century".

British accents

The presence or absence of this split is one of the most noticeable differences between different accents of English English. An isogloss runs across the Midlands from the Wash to the Welsh border, passing to the south of the cities of Birmingham and Leicester. North of the isogloss, the vowel in most of the affected words is usually the same short-a as in cat; south of the isogloss, the vowel in the affected words is generally long. (Gupta 2005)

There is some variation close to the isogloss; for example in the dialect of Birmingham (the so-called "Brummie") most of the affected words have a short-a, but aunt and laugh usually have long vowels. Additionally, some words which have /æ/ in most forms of American English, including half, calf, rather and can't, are usually found with long vowels in the Midlands and Northern England.

In northern English dialects, the short A is phonetically [a ~ a̠], while the broad A varies from [ɑː] to [aː]; for some speakers, the two vowels may be identical in quality, differing only in length ([a] vs [aː]) (Wells 1982: 356, 360). John Wells has claimed that Northerners who have high social status may have a trap–bath split (Wells 1982: 134) and has posted on his blog that he grew up with the split in Upholland, Lancashire. AF Gupta's study of students at the University of Leeds found that (on splitting the country in two halves) 93% of northerners used [a] in the word "bath" and 96% of southerners used [ɑː]. However, there are areas of the Midlands where the two variants co-exist and, once these are excluded, there were very few individuals in the north who had a trap-bath split (or in the south who did not have the split). Gupta wrote, "There is no justification for the claims by Wells and Mugglestone that this is a sociolinguistic variable in the north, though it is a sociolinguistic variable on the areas on the border [the isogloss between north and south]".

In some West Country accents of English English where the vowel in trap is realized as [a] rather than [æ], the vowel in the bath words was lengthened to [aː] and did not merge with the /ɑː/ of father. In those accents, trap, bath and father all have distinct vowels /a/, /aː/ and /ɑː/. (Wells 1982: 346–47).

In some other West Country accents, and in many forms of Scottish English, there is no distinction corresponding to the RP distinction between /æ/ and /ɑː/.

trap–bath split in Received Pronunciation

In Received Pronunciation (RP), the trap–bath split did not happen in all eligible words. It is hard to find a clear reason why some changed and others did not. Roughly, the more common a word the more likely that the change from flat /æ/ to broad /ɑː/ took place. It also looks as if monosyllables were more likely to change than polysyllables. The change very rarely took place in open syllables, except where closely derived from another word with /ɑː/. Thus passing is closely derived from pass, and so has broad A /pɑːsɪŋ/: passage is not so closely derived, and thus has flat A /pæsɪdʒ/. Here is the set of words that underwent transition, and counterexamples with the same environment:

For the words in the last row, subsequent sound changes have altered the conditions initially responsible for lengthening

There are some words in which both pronunciations are heard among southern speakers:

Use of broad A in mass is distinctly conservative and rare now: other international fluctuations are both common, but with further complications.

While graph, telegraph, photograph can have either (now in Received Pronunciation, they have broad A), graphic and permutations always has a flat A.

Broad A fluctuates in dialects that include it; before s it is a more common alternative when in its common voiceless variant (/s/ rather than /z/) (in transfer [tʰɹɑːnsfɜː], transport [tʰɹɑːnspɔːt] and variants) than when it is voiced (thus translate [trænzleɪt], trans-Atlantic [tʰɹænzətlæntɪk]).

Social attitudes

Some research has concluded that many people in the North of England have a dislike of the /ɑː/ vowel in bath words. AF Gupta wrote, "Many of the northerners were noticeably hostile to /ɡrɑːs/, describing it as 'comical', 'snobbish', 'pompous' or even 'for morons'." Whilst writing on a Labovian study of speech in West Yorkshire, KM Petyt wrote in 1985 that several respondents "positively said that they did not prefer the long-vowel form or that they really detested it or even that it was incorrect". However, Joan Beal said in a 1989 review of Petyt's work that those who disliked the pronunciation still associated it with the BBC and with the sort of professional jobs that they would aspire to.

Southern Hemisphere accents

Evidence for the date of the shift comes from the Southern Hemisphere accents, those of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.

In Australian English, there is generally agreement with southern British in words like path, laugh, class. But before N+consonant, as in dance, plant, most Australians use a flat A; aunt and can't, however, are invariably pronounced with a broad A. Phonetically, the broad A is [äː]. In Australia there is variation in the word castle, both pronunciations are commonly heard. For more information, see the table at Variation in Australian English. In South Australian English the broad A is usually used.

South African and New Zealand English have a distribution of sounds similar to that of RP.

North American accents

Most accents of American English and Canadian English are unaffected by the split. The main exceptions are parts of New England (see Boston accent), where the broad sound can be used in some of the same words as in southern England, such as aunt, ask, bath etc. ("aunt" though is unique, as the broad a pronunciation is found sporadically throughout the U.S., not only in New England)

Related, but distinct, phenomena include the following:

Bad–lad split

The bad–lad split is a phonemic split of the Early Modern English short vowel phoneme /æ/ into a short /æ/ and a long /æː/. This split is found in some varieties of English English and Australian English in which bad (with long [æː]) and lad (with short [æ]) do not rhyme. (Wells 1982: 288–89, 596; Horvath and Horvath 2001; Leitner 2004).

The phoneme /æ/ is usually lengthened to /æː/ when it comes before an /m/ or /n/, within the same syllable. It is furthermore lengthened in the adjectives bad, glad and mad; family also sometimes has a long vowel, regardless of whether it is pronounced as two or three syllables. Some speakers and regional varieties also use /æː/ before /ɡ/, /ŋ/, /l/ and/or /dʒ/; such lengthening may be more irregular than others. Lengthening is prohibited in the past tense of irregular verbs and function words and in modern contractions of polysyllabic words where the /æ/ was before a consonant followed by a vowel. Lengthening is not stopped by the addition of word-level suffixes.

British dialects with the bad–lad split have instead broad /ɑː/ in some words where an /m/ or /n/ follows the vowel. In this circumstance, Australian speakers usually (but not universally) use /æː/, except in the words aunt, can't and shan't, which have broad /aː/.

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/. In his pronouncing dictionary, he recorded several minimal pairs, for example bad /bæːd/, bade /bæd/ (also pronounced /ˈbeɪd/). He noted that for some speakers, jam actually represented two different pronunciations, one pronounced /dʒæːm/ meaning 'fruit conserve', the other /dʒæm/ meaning 'crush, wedging'. Later editions of this dictionary, edited by Alfred C. Gimson, dropped this distinction.

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-tensing in some varieties of American English. A common minimal pair for modern RP speakers is band /bæːnd/ and banned /bænd/. Australian speakers who use ‘span’ as the past tense of ‘spin’ also have a minimal pair between longer /spæːn/ (meaning width or the transitive verb with a river or divide) and /spæn/, the past tense of ‘spin’ (/spæn/). 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/.

Apart from Jones's, dictionaries rarely show a difference between these varieties of /æ/.

/æ/ tensing

In the sociolinguistics of English, /æ/ tensing is a process that occurs in many accents of American English, and to some degree in Canadian English, by which /æ/, the "short a" vowel found in such words as ash, bath, man, lamp, pal, rag, sack, trap, etc., is tensed: pronounced as more raised, and lengthened and/or diphthongized in various environments. The realization of this "tense" (as opposed to "lax") /æ/ varies from [æ̝ˑ] to [ɛə] to [eə] to [ɪə], depending on the speaker's regional accent. A common realization is [eə], and this transcription will be used for convenience in this article. For the purposes of the chart below, the symbol "~" represents a continuous (rather than a phonemic split) system. 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).

In foreign borrowings

Many foreign borrowed words such as taco, llama, drama, piranha, Bahamas, pasta, Bach, pecan, pajamas etc. vary as to whether or not they have the palm vowel or the trap vowel in various dialects in English. In Canada and Northern England, many speakers pronounce such words with the same vowel as trap, whereas in American, Australian and New Zealand English as well as RP, they usually have the same vowel as palm (although pasta has the trap vowel in RP). However the pronunciation of certain words can vary even in regions which either usually assign the trap vowel or usually assign the palm vowel to such words; pajamas and pecan, for instance, vary among Americans as to whether or not they have /æ/ or /ɑː/.

Other pronunciations

Other pronunciations of the letter ⟨a⟩ in English have come about through: