All About Education

The letter A can be traced to a head pictogram of a bull in Egyptian hieroglyphics or the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. Around 1600 BC the letters in the Phoenician alphabet had a linear form which became the basis for subsequent forms. His name seems to be very closely related to alef in the Hebrew alphabet. When the ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they did not use the cleft consonants (the sound of hamzah) contained in this letter in Phoenician and other Semitic languages, so they used this sign for vowels / a /, and retained their name with minor changes ( alpha). In the earliest Greek inscriptions after the Greek Dark Period, which occurred in the 8th century BC, this letter was written lying down, but in the subsequent Greek alphabet, this letter is generally similar to uppercase modern A, although various local variations can be distinguished by shortening one of its legs, or by the angle where the transverse line is placed. The Etruscans brought the Greek alphabet into their civilization in the Italian Peninsula and left this letter unchanged. Then the Romans adopted the Etruscan alphabet to write Latin, and the letters produced were then preserved in the modern Latin alphabet which was used to write many languages, including English.

In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller drew a map of the world in which there was the word "America" ​​to refer to the western continent. The naming is named after an Italian explorer and cartographer named Amerigo Vespucci. The first documentation related to the use of the phrase "United States of America" ​​is contained in an anonymous essay published in the Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia on April 6, 1776. In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson used the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" with capital letters in the title line of the draft Declaration of Independence. However, in the final version of the Declaration of Independence, the title was changed to "United States of America". In 1977, the Article of the Confederation officially stated: "The name of this Confederacy must be 'The United States of America'". The short form "United States" (United States) is also often used as a standard form of this country. Other common forms are "U.S.", "USA", and "America". The daily name is "U.S. of A.", and internationally it is sometimes only referred to as "the States". "Columbia," a popular word in poetry and songs in the late 1700s, was first put forward by Christopher Columbus; this word forms the basis for naming "District of Columbia". The standard designation for referring to United States citizens is "American". "United States", "American" and "U.S." also used to refer to matters relating to the United States. In English itself, the term "American" is rarely used to refer to subjects not related to the United States. Despite the fact that America is a continent and there are many other countries on the continent, the term "America" ​​is generally used only to refer to matters relating to the United States. The phrase "United States" was originally functioned as a plural form to describe a collection of independent states, for example in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which was ratified in 1865, it read: "the United States are ...". This phrase is then generally functioned as a singular; for example, after the end of the Civil War, it was stated: "the United States is ...". This singular form has been used as a standard until now, but the plural form is still retained in the idiom "these United States". This difference is considered not as a misuse of the word, but to reflect the difference between a collection of states (states) and a sovereign state (country). In non-English languages, the naming of this country is often translated from the phrases "United States" and from "United States of America", and generally also known as "America". In addition, initials / abbreviations are sometimes used. For example, in Spanish, the general designation for "United States" is "Estados Unidos", derived from the words "states" and "united", and abbreviated as "EE.UU."; double letters indicate that this word is used as a plural in Spanish. In Indonesian, the name used is United States, derived from the phrase "United States of America", with a short form of US, and generally also referred to as "America" ​​only.

In English, "a" usually symbolizes the sound of the front vowel almost openly unanimated (IPA: / æ /; as in the word pad), the back vowel is open intact (IPA: / ɑː /; as in the word father), or diphthong / eɪ / as in the words ace and major, because of the effect of Massive Vocal Shifts. In most languages ​​that use the Latin alphabet system, "a" symbolizes the sound of the front vowel being open uninterested (/ a /). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, variations of the letter "a" indicate different vowels. In the X-SAMPA system, the uppercase letter "A" indicates the back vowels are open unintentionally and the lowercase letter "a" indicates the front vowels open intact. "A" is the third most commonly used letter in English, and the second most used in Spanish and French. In one study, on average, about 3.68% of the letters used in English tended to ‹a›, while the figure was 6.22% for Spanish and 3.95% for French. [3] "A" is often used to indicate something or someone with a better or prestigious quality or status: A-, A or A +, the best results given by the teacher / lecturer to student assignments; A's for clean restaurants, etc.