æ
near-open front unrounded — a in cat.
near-openfrontunrounded
Hear it
Synthesised in your browser from this sound's own recipe — formants for vowels, filtered noise for fricatives, a burst for plosives. A robot mouth, not a recording: what you hear is the physics the symbol describes.
In combination
Sounds change colour depending on their neighbours — coarticulation is why isolated drilling only gets you so far.
Build longer chains in the combination lab.
How each language writes it
| Language | Spellings | Example | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | a | cat kæt cat | Between /ɛ/ and /a/; mouth wide. |
Rows follow the languages you have switched on at the top.