Ę

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).

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,

Alternations

ę often alternates with ą, for example:

• husband: mąż → mężowie (husbands), error: błąd → błędy (errors), pigeon: gołąb → gołębie (pigeons)
• oak in nominative: dąb → dębem (instrumental)
• hands in nominative: ręce → rąk (genitive)
• five: pięć → piąty (fifth)

Audio examples

•  węże (help·info) (snakes)
•  dźwięk (help·info) (sound)
•  mogę (help·info) (I can, I am able to)

Other languages

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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

• Ą
• Polish phonology
• Polish alphabet
• Ogonek
• Yus

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