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Â, â (a-circumflex) is a letter of the French, Friulian, Frisian, Portuguese, Romanian, Turkish, Vietnamese, Walloon, and Welsh alphabets.

Usage in various languages[edit]

Berber languages[edit]


Croatian and Serbian[edit]

"â" is not a letter in the Croatian and Serbian, but simply an "a" with the circumflex. It is used only occasionally, in order to disambiguate homographs which differ only by length of the vowel. Such situation is most common in (but not exclusive to) the plural genitive case, thus the name "genitive sign" for the circumflex and is pronounced as a long vowel. For example, "Ja sam sâm." (English: I am alone.)



Schrøter 1817 Modern Faroese
Brinhlid situr uj gjiltan Stouli,
Teâ hit veâna Vujv,
Drevur hoon Sjúra eâv Nordlondun
Uj Hildarhaj tiil sujn.
Brynhild situr í gyltum stóli,
tað hitt væna vív,
dregur hon Sjúrða av Norðlondum
í Hildarheið til sín.

Â is not used in modern Faroese, however.


Â in the French language is used as the letter "a" with a circumflex accent. It is a remnant of old French, where a vowel was followed, with some exceptions, by the consonant "s". For example, the modern form bâton (English: stick) comes from the ancient French baston. Phonetically, "â" is pronounced as /ɑ/, but only in dialects that distinguish it from /a/.


Â is used to represent the /ɑː/ sound.


Â is the 3rd letter of the Romanian alphabet and represents /ɨ/. This sound is also represented in Romanian as letter î. The difference between the two is that â is used in the middle of the word, as in "România", while î is used at the ends: "înțelegere" (understanding), "a urî" (to hate). A compound word starting or ending with the letter î will retain it, even if it goes in the middle of the word: "neînțelegere" (miss-understanding)


Â is the 3rd letter of the Vietnamese alphabet and represents /ɜ/. In Vietnamese phonology, diacritics can be added to form the following five forms to represent five tones of â.

  • Ầ ầ
  • Ẩ ẩ
  • Ẫ ẫ
  • Ấ ấ
  • Ậ ậ


Â is used to indicate the consonant before "a" is palatalised, as in "kâğıt" (paper). It is also used to indicate /aː/ in words where the long vowel changes the meaning, as in "adet" (pieces) and "âdet" (tradition).






In Welsh, â is used to represent long stressed a [aː] when, without the circumflex, the vowel would be pronounced as short [a], e.g., âr [aːr] "arable", as opposed to ar [ar] "on", or gwâr [ɡwaːr] "civilised, humane", rather than gwar [ɡwar] "nape of the neck". It is often found in final syllables when two occurrences of the letter a combine to produce one long stressed vowel. This commonly happens when a verb stem ending in stressed a combines with the nominalising suffix -ad, as in cantiata- + -ad giving caniatâd [kanjaˈtaːd] "permission" and also when a singular noun ending in a receives the plural suffix -au, e.g., drama + -au becoming dramâu [draˈmaɨ, draˈmai] "dramas, plays". It is also useful in writing borrowed words with final stress, e.g. brigâd [brɪˈɡaːd] "brigade".

A circumflex is also used in the word â, which is both a preposition meaning "with, by means of, as", and also the third person non-past singular of the verbal noun mynd "go". This distinguishes it in writing from similarly pronounced a "and; whether; who, which, that".

Character mappings[edit]

Charset Unicode ISO 8859-1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16
Majuscule Â U+00C2 Â latin capital letter a with circumflex (HTML: &#194; &Acirc;) C2
Minuscule â U+00E2 â latin small letter a with circumflex (HTML: &#226; &acirc;) E2

TeX and LaTeX[edit]


See also[edit]

External links[edit]

Letter A with diacritics
Áá Àà Ăă Ắắ Ằằ Ẵẵ Ẳẳ Ââ Ấấ Ầầ Ẫẫ Ẩẩ Ǎǎ Åå Ǻǻ Ää Ǟǟ Ãã Ȧȧ Ǡǡ Ąą Āā Ảả Ȁȁ Ȃȃ Ạạ
Ặặ Ậậ Ḁḁ Ⱥⱥ Ɐɐ Ɑɑ
Letters using circumflex accent ( ◌̂ )
Ââ Ĉĉ Êê Ĝĝ Ĥĥ Î î Ĵĵ Ôô Ŝŝ Ûû Ŵŵ Ŷŷ Ẑẑ