æ The a in cat and hat
æ is the vowel in cat, hat, bag and black, the sound phonics calls a short a. The symbol, called ash, joins a and e, and that's a fair description of the sound: an open a with some e in it.
Japanese has one a, and English has three vowels that land on it: the æ of cat, the ʌ of cut and the ɑ of American hot. Of the three, æ is the brightest and sits furthest forward in the mouth. That brightness is what to listen for.
Hear æ in words
Each tap plays the word in a different voice. Real clips from the app.
How to say æ
- 1
Start from the e of bet, with the tongue forward and its tip resting behind the lower front teeth.
- 2
Keep the tongue forward and drop the jaw about as far as for Japanese ア. The lips pull a little to the sides.
- 3
Hold it a little longer than Japanese ア. For a short vowel, æ is long, especially before b, d, g, m and n, as in bad, bag and man.
- 4
Check it in a row: bet, bat, but. The jaw drops from bet to bat, then the tongue slides back to the middle for but.
Why æ is hard for Japanese speakers
To a Japanese ear, æ is a kind of ア, so katakana writes black as ブラック and match as マッチ. After k and g it often gets a small ャ instead: cat is キャット, gap is ギャップ. That ャ is the forward, e-like part of æ that Japanese ア doesn't have.
Because ア covers both æ and ʌ, hat and hut, fan and fun, and track and truck are the same word in katakana: ハット, ファン, トラック. The fix is to give æ a place of its own in your ear: brighter and wider than ア, with a trace of エ.
How æ is spelled
| Spelling | Examples |
|---|---|
| a | cat, hat, black, track |
| a before ng or nk | hang, sang, thank |
| au, ai (rare) | laugh (American), plaid |
æ in American and British English
American voices make æ especially bright and long. Before n and m, many of them add a glide, so man and fan sound close to "me-an" and "fe-an", and before ng, as in thank and hang, it rises toward the ay of day. British voices say a plainer, more open a, closer to Japanese ア, though still further forward than the ʌ of cup.
Some words change vowel between accents. Bath, glass, pass and path have æ in American English, but the long a of father in the south of England and in most Australian voices.
Studies: Strange et al. 1996 · Lambacher et al. 2005
Train your ear for æ
A sound is easiest to learn next to the one it gets confused with. Each collection has the full word list and a quiz, and the word pairs below have pages of their own, with both words in many voices.
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