single-letter words

About

Let's begin with English: we have a, I and O.

In French, there's y ('there' or 'it'), while in Spanish it means 'and', Welsh 'the', Vietnamese 'he' or 'him' and Guaraní, official language of Paraguay, 'water'.

Latin has e ('out of', 'from'), which in Italian and Portugese (and sometimes Spanish) is 'and', Romanian 'is' (and also an expression of annoyance, boredom, surprise or satisfaction), Hungarian 'this' (and also 'hey', as it is also in Serbian), Scottish Gaelic and Welsh 'he' or 'him' (or 'it'), and Breton 'his' or 'in'. In Japanese e, rōmaji for hiragana え, means 'picture', 'handle', 'understanding', 'bay' (of water), 'bait' or 'intelligent'.

There's å: 'stream', 'creek' or generally 'small river' in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish; 'oh' or 'well' (interj.) in Danish; 'to' (particle) in Norwegian Bokmål).

á in Icelandic, and in Old Norse, is 'river' and also I/he 'own(s)', 'on', 'in' and 'ouch!'. In Faroese, it's 'brook' or 'river', and 'on', or 'onto', 'to', 'near', 'beside', 'in', 'at'; in Irish, 'him', 'her', 'it', 'them'. In Galician, it can mean 'to the', or as a noun, 'wing'. In Mandarin and Cantonese, pinyin á or a2 can mean 'hoarse' (嗄).

A itself in Portugese is 'the' or 'to'/'at', in Polish 'and' or 'but', in Scots 'I' or 'all', and in Vietnamese an interjection of 'hah!'. In Spanish, 'to', 'by' or 'at', or a personalised version of the direct object ('personal a'); in Slovene, 'but'; in Scottish Gaelic, 'his/her/its', or 'do', or a particle used before the vocative, an infinitive, or a cardinal number; in Romanian, 'of', or the infinitive marker 'to', or third person singular of 'have'; in Latin, 'of' or 'from'; in Italian, 'in, 'at', 'to'; in Irish, it's a particle for all sorts, a preposition, and a pronoun. In Hungarian, it's 'the'; Danish, 'per'; Czech, 'and'; Croatian and Bosnian, 'and' and 'but'; Catalan, 'in', 'at' and 'per'; in Ainu, 'I', 'we', 'someone' and 'my'. In I'saka (Papua New Guinea), though I'm not sure I trust the single source I have on this, it means 'pig'.

In Old English, ā means 'ever' or 'always' (as in 'aye'). In Japanese (hiragana ああ) it's 'in this/that way', or simply 'oh!'/'ah!' (as also in Latin). Mandarin too has ā (a1) for 'ah!' (啊), but also for 'actinium' (錒), 'to salt' or 'to be dirty' (腌), and as a prefix used in names (阿).

In French, à means 'to', 'at', 'of' or 'with' or 'from' (this last as it does also in Scottish Gaelic). In Portugese, it's 'to the' or 'at the'. Mandarin's à (a4) is an 'oh' (啊), while…

…ǎ (a3, 啊) is more of an 'oh!' for surprise.

In Galician, é is 'is', while in Min Nan (a Chinese language) it's 'short' (矮), as in not tall.

(tbc)