View source for 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.svg|thumb|Latin letter A with grave]]'''À''', '''à''' ([[a]]-[[grave accent|grave]]) is a letter of the [[Catalan language|Catalan]], [[Emilian-Romagnol language|Emilian-Romagnol]], [[French language|French]], [[Italian language|Italian]], [[Maltese language|Maltese]],   [[Occitan language|Occitan]], [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]], [[Sardinian language|Sardinian]], [[Scottish Gaelic]],<ref name=":0">{{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}}</ref> [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]], and [[Welsh language|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 language|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|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 dialect|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 [[homophone]]s, e.g. {{wikt-lang|fr|la}} {{gloss|the.{{gcl|F}}.{{gcl|SG}}}} and {{wikt-lang|fr|là}} {{gloss|there}}.

=== Portuguese ===
{{see|Crasis#Portuguese}}
À is used in [[Portuguese language|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.<ref name=":0" />

== Character mappings ==

* {{unichar| 00C0 }}
* {{unichar|00E0}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}{{Latin script}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:A, grave}}
[[Category:Latin letters with diacritics]]
[[Category:Polish letters with diacritics]]

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