What is æ

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Notify me of new comments via email. Cancel Report. Create a new account. Log In. Carter was iirc Secretary of Defense. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. John Lawler John Lawler As I said, you have to distinguish English spelling from pronunciation. Lawton - You're missing the fact that English spelling does not represent English pronunciation -- and was not meant to represent it, whatever they told you in school.

It represents Middle English pronunciation , not Modern English. Don't look at spelling and expect to get pronunciation; it doesn't work that way. Lawton: trademark restrictions may be one explanation, but you may see 'ae' elsewhere where trademark isn't involved. There the explanation would be that it is an archaic spelling, like all of tchrist's alternate spellings. I just know that when doing NLP work read: using a computer for natural language processing, as it is termed on biomedical journal articles, you have to be especially careful for those variants, as they are not at all uncommon there like in The Lancet.

You sometimes even get the ligature versions. Show 17 more comments. Mitch Mitch Mitch, see my comment. That's was what I was alluding to. I only answered separately from JL because i felt there needed to be a direct answer to the OP's 'How do you pronounce it?

Latin ae was not always a digraph In Latin, not all instances of the sequence ae were examples of the ae digraph. History of the Latin "ae" digraph The Latin ae digraph replaced an ai digraph that was used in Old Latin.

Could you give the basic difference for aegis in BrE and AmE, for example?? Words that originally had ligatures in contrast to words like aesthetic where the ae is the same in both, if that was? Also, in encyclopedia, same sound in both, right? No one is saying these things. Lambie: Hmm, I'm not sure I wrote an answer to a separate question about the pronunciation of "aegis": english.

What I mean is that there are only so many classes or categories of the ex-ligature appearing in English. I would have grouped them and shown how some differ in AmE and BrE and some do not. See what I mean? My first comment provides an example of that. Excellent answer. You mention that you are unsure where the "ay" pronunciation comes from. I would think it comes from English speakers who unconsciously know that a silent 'e' after a vowel makes the vowel long: "Rae", "Mae", "sundae", "toe", "pie", "cue", etc.

Chase Sandmann 1 1 gold badge 9 9 silver badges 20 20 bronze badges. Hal Fulton Hal Fulton 49 1 1 silver badge 1 1 bronze badge. I pronounce alumni to rhyme with knee , and alumnae to rhyme with nigh , as do most of the British people I know. You say: " This is an inherent contradiction. You are describing a pronunciation that is actively used, yet you appear to be prescribing an alternative pronunciation. No no. Oesophagus is how you spell it.

It's American that has it without the O. Also Americans spell paedophile without the A they also pronounce it differently. As for computer people I do pronounce daemon as demon and yes I'm a Unix programmer so I know well what daemons are.

But it still should be noted that that is how your pronounce it whether or not the answer is contradicting itself. Elisavet Apostolaki Elisavet Apostolaki 29 1 1 bronze badge. It's the same in Britain; the difference is that anaemia , for example, is here pronounced with the long e but spelt ae. OPs question seems to spring from a transatlantic misunderstanding. TimLymington More like a difference of spelling.

But maybe that's what you meant. Peter Mortensen 3, 7 7 gold badges 32 32 silver badges 37 37 bronze badges. The question specifically asked about rules for "ae" in general, not about the pronunciation of the specific word "encyclopaedia" or about the pronunciation in other languages.

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