Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz - a busy GP, Linux user (console version), Wikipedian (hopefully) ...

My e-mail address (just in case):
user - kpjas+
at sign - @+
domain - wikipedia dot pl

I believe I can call myself one of the old-timers with Internal ID number 11.
Lately (September 2001 onwards) I have been mainly active on the Polish Wikipedia :
http://pl.wikipedia.org/
See my page on the Polish Wikipedia.

This is a list of pages I have so far contributed to or made a substantial review of :

the list was skipped. See My contributions list instead

My areas of interest include :

• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Medicine
  • Infectious diseases
  • Cardiology
  • Endocrinology
• Biology
• Zoology
• Music
• Film
• Literature
• and a whole lot more...

"Æ", or "æ", is a vowel and a letter used in the Icelandic, Danish and Norwegian alphabets. It was also used in Old English and in medieval and early modern Latin. The origin of the letter is a ligature for AE.

In Danish, Icelandic and Norwegian, Æ is now a unique vowel, not a diphthong, umlaut, or ligature. In German and Swedish, the letter "Ä" is the equivalent.

In Old English, the ligature was used to denote a sound intermediate between those of "A" and "E" (IPA [æ]), very much like the short "A" of cat in many dialects of modern English. In this context, the name of the letter is Æsc (Ash in modern English, meaning the tree), after the name of the corresponding letter in the Futharc.

In Latin, the combination denotes a diphthong (IPA [ae]) that had a value similar to the long "I" in most dialects of modern English. It was used both in native words (spelled with "AI" before the 2nd century BC) and in borrowings from Greek words having the diphthong "AI" ("ΑΙ"). Both classical and modern practice is to write the letters separately, but the ligature was used in medieval and early modern writings, in part because "Æ" was reduced to a simple long vowel (IPA [e:]) in late Latin.

The symbol "æ" is also used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to denote the sound of the Old English letter, an unrounded, semi-open front vowel. In this context, it is always lowercase.

For computers, when using the Latin-1 or Unicode sets, the codes for 'Æ' and 'æ' are respectively 198 and 230, or C6 and E6 in hexadecimal. In HTML, you can also use the HTML character entity references Æ and æ.

See also: Å, Ø, Þ, Ð, Yogh, Œ