The sound represented in Romanian by ă is a mid-central vowel/ə/, i.e. schwa.[1][2] Unlike in English, Catalan and French but like in Indonesian (using e rather than ă), the vowel can be stressed.[3] There are words in which it is the only vowel, such as măr/mər/ ("apple") or văd/vəd/ ("I see"). Additionally, some words that also contain other vowels can have the stress on ă like cărțile/ˈkərt͡sile/ ("the books") and odăi/oˈdəj/ ("rooms"). Another grapheme <a> with diacritic in Romanian is <â>.
Vietnamese
Ă is the 2nd letter of the Vietnamese alphabet and represents /ă/. Because Vietnamese is a tonal language this letter may have any one of the 5 tonal symbols above or below it (or even no accent at all, since the Vietnamese first tone is identified by the lack of accent marks, see also Vietnamese phonology): Ằ ằ, Ắ ắ, Ẳ ẳ, Ẵ ẵ, Ặ ặ.[4]
Malay
The sound represented in pre-1972 Malaysian orthography by ă is a vowel. It occurred in the final syllable of the root word such as lamă/lamə/ ("long", "old"), mată/matə/ ("eye"), and sană/sanə/ ("there"). The letter was replaced in 1972 with a in the New Rumi Spelling.
Balinese
Ă or ă are used in Balinese romanization, e.g. Kabupatén Tăbăṅan (Tabanan Regency ).
^Sala, Marius (2010). "Romanian". Revue belge de Philologie et d'Histoire. 88 (3): 841–872. doi:10.3406/rbph.2010.7806. Retrieved 3 February 2024.
^Recasens, Daniel (July 2019). "Stressed /e/ Centralization into Schwa and Related Mid Vowel Developments in Catalan and Elsewhere in the Romania". Transactions of the Philological Society. 117 (2): 294–316. doi:10.1111/1467-968X.12159. ISSN0079-1636.