Ę (minuscule: ę; Polish E z ogonkiem, "E with a little tail") is a letter in the Polish alphabet and Lithuanian alphabet. In Latin, Irish, and Old Norse palaeography, it is known as E caudata (tailed E).
Contents |
In Polish
In Polish ę comes after e in the alphabet but never appears at the start of a word. It usually represents a nasal vowel, more specifically [ɛ̃] or [ɛw̃].
Unlike in French, nasal vowels in Polish are asynchronous, meaning that they are pronounced as an oral vowel + a nasal semivowel, or a nasal vowel + a nasal semivowel. For instance, ę might be more accurately represented as [ɛw̃] but for the sake of simplicity, it is usually transcribed [ɛ̃].
Some examples,
- język ("language"), pronounced [ˈjɛ̃zɨk]
- mięso ("meat"), pronounced [ˈmjɛ̃sɔ]
- ciężki ("heavy", "hard"), pronounced [ˈtɕɛ̃ʂki]
Before all stops and affricates, it is pronounced as an oral vowel + nasal consonant. The nasal consonant may be either m (before p or b) or n (all other cases). For example,
- więcej ("more"), pronounced [ˈvjɛntsɛj] rather than [ˈvjɛ̃tsɛj]
- sędzia ("judge", "referee"), pronounced [ˈsɛndʑa]
- głęboki ("deep"), pronounced [ɡwɛmˈbɔki]
If ę is the final letter of a word, or if it is followed by either l or ł, most Poles will pronounce it simply as [ɛ]. For example, będę ("I will (be)") can be either [ˈbɛndɛ] or [ˈbɛndɛ̃], similarly dziękuję ("I thank") can be either [dʑɛnˈkujɛ] or [dʑɛnˈkujɛ̃].
History
Polish ę evolved from short nasal a of medieval Polish, which developed into a short nasal e in the modern language. This medieval vowel, along with its long counterpart, evolved in turn from the merged nasal *ę and *ǫ of Late Proto-Slavic. Thus,
| Late Proto-Slavic | /ẽ/ and /õ/, represented by ę and ǫ |
| Medieval Polish | long and short /ã/, written approximately as ø |
| Modern Polish | long /ã/ → short /ɔ̃/, written ą short /ã/ → short /ɛ̃/, written ę |
Alternations
ę often alternates with ą, for example:
- husband: mąż → mężowie (husbands), snake: wąż → węże (snakes), pigeon: gołąb → gołębie (pigeons)
- oak in nominative: dąb → dębem (instrumental)
- hands in nominative: ręce → rąk (genitive)
- five: pięć → piąty (fifth)
Audio examples
Other languages
 |
This section requires expansion. |
Computer use
|
This section requires expansion. |
See also
| The Basic modern Latin alphabet | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aa | Bb | Cc | Dd | Ee | Ff | Gg | Hh | Ii | Jj | Kk | Ll | Mm | Nn | Oo | Pp | Rr | Ss | Tt | Uu | Vv | Ww | Xx | Yy | Zz | |
|
Letter E with diacritics
Letters using ogonek sign
history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters • ISO/IEC 646 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
This writing system-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
