Ę

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Ę (minuscule: ę; Polish E z ogonkiem, "E with a little tail") is a letter in the Polish alphabet, Lithuanian alphabet, and the Dalecarlian 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 is most commonly pronounced as /ɛw̃/, /ɛn/, /ɛm/, or /ɛ/, depending on the context.

Unlike French, nasal vowels in Polish are asynchronous, meaning that they are pronounced as an oral vowel + a nasal semivowel [ɛw̃], or a nasal vowel + a nasal semivowel. For the sake of simplicity, it is sometimes transcribed [ɛ̃].

Some examples,

  • język ("language"), pronounced [ˈjɛw̃zɨk]
  • mięso ("meat"), pronounced [ˈmjɛw̃sɔ]
  • ciężki ("heavy", "difficult"), pronounced [ˈtɕɛw̃ʂki]

Before all stops and affricates, it is pronounced as an oral vowel + nasal consonant, with /ɛn/ before most consonants, while /ɛm/ appears before p or b. For example,

  • więcej ("more"), pronounced [ˈvjɛntsɛj]
  • 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 ("thank you") can be either [dʑɛŋˈkujɛ] or [dʑɛŋˈkujɛ̃].

In dialects of some regions, ę in final position is also pronounced as /ɛm/, thus, robię is occasionally pronounced as [ˈrɔbjɛm]. Such a way of speaking is a "trademark" of the former Polish President Lech Wałęsa, and some of his sentences, often transcribed to reflect the prononciation, e.g. "Nie chcem, ale muszem" (properly written "Nie chcę, ale muszę"; eng. "I don't want to, but I have to") became a part of popular language.

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,

Evolution
Early Proto-Slavic *em/*en and *am/*an
Late Proto-Slavic /ẽ/ and /õ/, transcribed by ⟨ę⟩ and ⟨ǫ⟩
Medieval Polish short and long /ã/, written approximately ⟨ø⟩
Modern Polish short /ã//ɛw̃/, /ɛn/, /ɛm/, written ⟨ę⟩

long /ã//ɔw̃/, /ɔn/, /ɔm/, written ⟨ą⟩

Alternations

ę often alternates with ą, for example:

  • husband: mążmężowie (husbands), error: błądbłędy (errors), pigeon: gołąbgołębie (pigeons)
  • oak in nominative: dąbdębem (instrumental)
  • hands in nominative: ręcerąk (genitive)
  • five: pięćpiąty (fifth)

Audio examples

Other languages

Computer use

The Unicode codepoints for the letter are U+0118 for the capital, and U+0119 for the lower case. The HTML-codes are Ę and ę for Ę and ę, respectively.

See also

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Letter E with diacritics
Éé Èè Ĕĕ Êê Ếế Ềề Ễễ Ểể Ěě Ëë Ẽẽ Ėė Ȩȩ Ḝḝ Ęę Ēē Ḗḗ Ḕḕ Ẻẻ Ȅȅ Ȇȇ Ẹẹ Ệệ Ḙḙ Ḛḛ Ɇɇ
Letters using ogonek sign ( ◌̨ )
Ąą Ą̈ą̈ Ęę Į į Ǫǫ Ǫ̈ǫ̈ Ųų
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