SHAPE: from Northsemitic (Phoenician): The shape is supposed to show the two horns of the animal (ox) which was letter's name. It obviously rotated into the greek Appears in all cities of the Western-Eastern greek alphabet groups.

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SOUND: In ancient greek pronunciation and prosody the letter A could sound either as /a/ short or [α:] long (hence it is a dichronic two-valued vowel. After hellenistic times it is pronounced only short. DIPHTHONGS: In ancient times both /a/ values could produce diphthongs: [a]+[i]=[ai]   [α:]+[i]=[αi].
In later greek it is always pronounced short [a]. Sometimes it may be pronounced linked with an /i/ sound in a fast way, producing the diphthong [ai] but sometimes not linked: [a i].

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NAME: ETYMOLOGY from northsemitic (phoenician): 'aleph = ox, where Aleph represented a /'h/ laryngeal sound.
NAME: SPELLING polytonic: λφα  

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COMBINATIONS:
DIGRAMMES: The following digraphs were pronounced as diphthongs in ancient times (and in today's erasmic) but gradually (after hellenistic times) as monophthongs:  check AI = [e] erasmic: [ai], mediaeval A_ι ᾳ, modern AÏ αï and AY = [af] or [av] erasmic: [au].

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MORE GREEK WORDS STARTING WITH A:
•αγωγή=leading towards/education - (paed)agogy •άθλος=achievement - athl(et) •ακούω=I hear - acou(stics) •άκρο=edge - acro(bat), acro(phobia) •άνδρας=man (male) - andro(id) •άνθρωπος=human - anthropo(logy) •αρχή=the beginning - (an)archy, archi(tect) •(anc.gr.) αστήρ, (mod.gr.) άστρο=star astro(nomy) •αυτό=it, itself - auto(graph)