Ä
"Ä", or "ä", is a letter, representing a vowel, in the Finnish, Swedish and Estonian alphabets. It also appears in the German alphabet, where it represents "A" with umlaut, and is alphabetized as though spelled "AE".
The origin of the letter form was originally a ligature for the digraph "AE". In the Icelandic, Danish and Norwegian alphabets, "Æ" is the equivalent.
In German and Swedish, "Ä" is pronounced /E/ like the "ai" in hair.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, "ä" is used to represent the sound of the "a" in "father".
