À

{{short description|Latin letter A with grave accent}}{{For|the Cyrillic letter А̀|A with grave (Cyrillic)}}{{Refimprove|date=January 2024}}File:Latin letter A with grave.svgÀ, à (a-grave) is a letter of the Catalan, Emilian-Romagnol, French, Italian, Maltese, Occitan, Portuguese, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic,{{Cite thesis |title=The standardisation of Scottish Gaelic orthography 1750-2007: a corpus approach |url=https://eleanor.lib.gla.ac.uk/record=b3155057 |publisher=University of Glasgow |date=2016 |degree=PhD |language=en |first=Susan |last=Ross}} Vietnamese, and Welsh languages consisting of the letter A of the ISO basic Latin alphabet and a grave accent. À is also used in Pinyin transliteration. In most languages, it represents the vowel a. This letter is also a letter in Taos to indicate a mid tone.

In accounting or invoices, à abbreviates "at a rate of": "5 apples à $1" (one dollar each). That usage is based upon the French preposition à and has evolved into the at sign (@). Sometimes, it is part of a surname: Thomas à Kempis, Mary Anne à Beckett.

Usage in various languages

= Emilian-Romagnol =

À is used in Emilian to represent short stressed [a], e.g. Bolognese dialect sacàtt [saˈkatː] "sack".

= French =

The grave accent is used in the French language to differentiate homophones, e.g. {{wikt-lang|fr|la}} {{gloss|the.{{gcl|F}}.{{gcl|SG}}}} and {{wikt-lang|fr|là}} {{gloss|there}}.

= Portuguese =

À is used in Portuguese to represent a contraction of the feminine singular definite article a with the preposition a or the demonstrative aquele and its inflections and derivations (aquela, aquilo, aqueles, aquelas, aqueloutro(a), etc):

: Ele foi à praia.

: He went to the beach.

: É igual àquela camisa que eu tinha.

: It's identical to that shirt I had.

À is always unstressed, as opposed to Á and Â, which are always stressed.

= Scottish Gaelic =

In early orthographic descriptions of Scottish Gaelic from the 18th and 19th centuries, à is the only way to represent a long [a]; later forms of Scottish Gaelic also used the acute accent [á] to indicate a longer [a] sound.

Character mappings

{{charmap

|00C0|name1=Latin capital letter A with grave

|00E0|name2=Latin small letter A with grave

|map1=ISO 8859-1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16|map1char1=C0|map1char2=E0

}}

Microsoft Windows users can type an "à" by pressing {{key press|Alt|1}}{{key press|3}}{{key press|3}} or {{key press|Alt|0}}{{key press|2}}{{key press|2}}{{key press|4}} on the numeric pad of the keyboard. "À" can be typed by pressing {{key press|Alt|0}}{{key press|1}}{{key press|9}}{{key press|2}}. On a Mac, you hold {{key press|Option|`}}, and then let go and type {{key press|a}}. Similarly on a GNU/Linux system, where the Compose key can be configured.

References

Category:Latin letters with diacritics

Category:Polish letters with diacritics

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