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I read in some places on the 'net that the dipthong/digraph æ is pronounced like the "a" in "cat." But all the words I know that contain that word pronounce with the tongue more forward, closer to a short "e." "Aesthetic," Encyclopaedia," "archaeology." I would go so far as to say it is not so far from the long "a" as in "day."

Can someone clear this up, using language for a non-linguist (someone who would generally not know a digraph from a dipthong, which I had to look up)? I am hoping it is a little more cool and "European" than just "cat."

AdaMadman
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    This confusion is probably due to the fact that æ in English is used for both the ligature of the letters a and e and also for the single letter ash (æsc or ᚫ) from Old English. The Old English ash should generally be pronounced like the "a" in "cat" (for example, the name-element Alf was originally Ælf), but when it's a ligature representing ae in Latin-derived words (encyclopaedia) or αι in Greek-derived words (aesthetic and archaeology) it will have a different sound. – 1006a Jan 17 '17 at 10:05
  • The simplest way to find correct pronunciations (and they vary, even for a single given word) is to look up individual words in dictionaries which give audible renderings. eg OLD – Edwin Ashworth Jan 17 '17 at 10:06
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    The digraph ⟨ae⟩ (more old-fashionedly also ⟨æ⟩) in Modern English almost never represents /a/ (as in cat). It normally represents /iː/ (as in she), /ε/ (as in them), or sometimes /eɪ/ (as in they) in Latinate plurals like vertebrae. There are a very, very small group of words where it is pronounced /a/… but honestly, it’s such a small group of obscure words that I can’t even think of a single one of them now. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 17 '17 at 10:09

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