# Ä
**Ä** (lowercase **ä**) is a letter of the [Latin script](https://www.edgepedia.org/latin-script) consisting of the letter A bearing two dots above, encoded in Unicode as U+00C4 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS and U+00E4 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS.[1](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf) It is used in several European languages, including German, Swedish, Finnish, Estonian, Slovak, and Dutch, to represent a vowel sound or quality distinct from plain A.[2](https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/formex/physical-specifications/character-encoding/latin-letters) Whether the two dots are called a diaeresis or an umlaut depends on the language and the function the mark performs.[3](https://en.alegsaonline.com/art/211)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Code points | Ä = U+00C4, ä = U+00E4, in the Latin-1 Supplement block[1](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf) |
| Decomposition | Each is canonically equivalent to the base letter plus U+0308 COMBINING DIAERESIS (0041 A + 0308, or 0061 a + 0308)[1](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf) |
| UTF-8 encoding | C384 for Ä and C3A4 for ä[2](https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/formex/physical-specifications/character-encoding/latin-letters) |
| Input and markup | Windows Alt code 196; HTML entity Ä; CSS escape \00C4[4](https://www.cyberdefinitions.com/symbols/accented-letters/Latin-Capital-Letter-a-with-Diaeresis.html) |
| Languages | Listed for Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, German, Slovak, and Swedish in the EU character table[2](https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/formex/physical-specifications/character-encoding/latin-letters) |
| Alphabet status | A separate letter placed after Z in the Finnish and Swedish alphabets (…Z Å Ä Ö)[5](https://jkorpela.fi/finnish/The_alphabet.html) |
| Fallback spelling | Often transliterated as "ae" when the character is unavailable[3](https://en.alegsaonline.com/art/211) |
## Encoding
Ä and ä occupy adjacent positions in the Latin-1 Supplement block, which mirrors the older ISO 8859 treatment of accented letters such as "ä" and "ö" as individual characters rather than as base letter plus combining mark.[1](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf) • [6](https://unicode.org/versions/Unicode18.0.0/core-spec/chapter-2/) Each also has a canonical decomposition: the capital is equivalent to the sequence A followed by U+0308 COMBINING DIAERESIS, and the lowercase to a plus the same combining mark.[1](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf) Unicode normalization makes these two representations interchangeable: text written as a base letter plus combining diaeresis and text written with the precomposed character are canonically equivalent, and normalization forms such as NFC and NFD convert between them.[7](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/) The combining-mark convention also resolves ambiguity in reading order: the sequence a, combining diaeresis, u unambiguously represents "äu" rather than "aü".[6](https://unicode.org/versions/Unicode18.0.0/core-spec/chapter-2/)
In UTF-8, the dominant encoding of Unicode text, Ä is the two-byte sequence C384 and ä is C3A4.[2](https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/formex/physical-specifications/character-encoding/latin-letters) For manual input on Windows the [Alt code](https://www.edgepedia.org/alt-code) is 196, and in HTML the character can be written as the entity Ä or the numeric reference Ä.[4](https://www.cyberdefinitions.com/symbols/accented-letters/Latin-Capital-Letter-a-with-Diaeresis.html)
## Umlaut and diaeresis
The same two dots serve two different linguistic functions, and linguists distinguish them by name. A diaeresis signals that a vowel is to be pronounced separately from an adjacent vowel, while an umlaut marks a vowel whose quality has shifted, historically through fronting.[3](https://en.alegsaonline.com/art/211) In English, the diaeresis appears in words such as naïve and names such as Brontë, indicating that a vowel that might otherwise be silent is sounded or that the second vowel of a pair is pronounced separately; such spellings are now often written without the mark.[8](https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/diaeresis)
In German, ä is an umlaut letter. It represents a fronted, unrounded /ɛ/ sound distinct from plain a, as in *Mädchen* (girl), where the sound resembles the vowel of English "bed".[4](https://www.cyberdefinitions.com/symbols/accented-letters/Latin-Capital-Letter-a-with-Diaeresis.html) Whether Ä is treated as a separate letter or as a modification of A differs by language, and when the character is unavailable it is conventionally transliterated as "ae".[3](https://en.alegsaonline.com/art/211)
## Separate letter in Nordic alphabets
In Swedish and Finnish, ä is a full letter of the alphabet with its own place in sorting order. The traditional Finnish alphabet taught in schools is the basic [Latin alphabet](https://www.edgepedia.org/latin-alphabet) with Å, Ä, and Ö added at the end, in the order A through Z followed by Å Ä Ö, and it is identical to the traditional [Swedish alphabet](https://www.edgepedia.org/swedish-alphabet).[5](https://jkorpela.fi/finnish/The_alphabet.html) In Finnish, ä represents its own vowel sound, and the vowels a, o, and u stand in strict opposition to ä, ö, and y in Finnish and cannot occur in the same non-compound word, a consequence of vowel harmony.[9](https://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn/docs/4th-uncsgn-docs/E_conf_74_3_Add1.pdf)
The EU character table lists Ä and ä for Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, German, Slovak, and Swedish.[2](https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/formex/physical-specifications/character-encoding/latin-letters) In the [Swedish language](https://www.edgepedia.org/swedish-language), both ä and ö are considered distinct letters of the alphabet, following the letter "z".[6](https://unicode.org/versions/Unicode18.0.0/core-spec/chapter-2/)
## Collation and processing
Sorting ä correctly requires language-specific rules rather than simple binary comparison of code points, because collation varies by language and not just by script.[10](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/tr10-34.html) In Finnish and Swedish, ä sorts after z as an independent letter, so a word beginning with ä follows all words beginning with unmarked letters. Finnish sorting practice is governed by several national standards, including SFS 4600 for general sorting, SFS 5050 for bibliographic sorting, and SFS-EN 13710, which is based on a pan-European standard with adaptations to Finnish usage.[5](https://jkorpela.fi/finnish/The_alphabet.html)
For text processing, the canonical equivalence of Ä with A plus combining diaeresis means that two strings that look identical may be encoded differently, and programs that compare or search text typically normalize first.[7](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/)
## References
1. [The Unicode Standard, Version 17.0, Latin-1 Supplement code chart (U+00C4, U+00E4)](https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf)
2. [Latin letters, EU Vocabularies, Publications Office of the EU](https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/formex/physical-specifications/character-encoding/latin-letters)
3. [Ä — A with diaeresis (umlaut), Alegsa](https://en.alegsaonline.com/art/211)
4. [Capital Letter A with Diaeresis (Ä): symbol and codes, CyberDefinitions](https://www.cyberdefinitions.com/symbols/accented-letters/Latin-Capital-Letter-a-with-Diaeresis.html)
5. [The alphabet, Handbook of Finnish, 2nd edition (Jukka Korpela)](https://jkorpela.fi/finnish/The_alphabet.html)
6. [Chapter 2, The Unicode Standard, Version 18.0.0 core specification](https://unicode.org/versions/Unicode18.0.0/core-spec/chapter-2/)
7. [UAX #15: Unicode Normalization Forms](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr15/)
8. [Diaeresis, Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language via Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/diaeresis)
9. [United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, Finnish alphabet](https://unstats.un.org/unsd/geoinfo/ungegn/docs/4th-uncsgn-docs/E_conf_74_3_Add1.pdf)
10. [UTS #10: Unicode Collation Algorithm](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/tr10-34.html)
---
*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Languages and linguistics › Writing and notation systems › Latin script*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license