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Ę

Ę (minuscule: ę) is a letter in the Polish alphabet and other languages. It is formed from the letter e and an ogonek. In Latin and Irish palaeography, it is known as E caudata.

1 In Polish
2 Other languages
3 Computer use
4 See also

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 IPA: [/ɛ̃/] or IPA: [/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 represented as /ɛ̃/.

Some examples,

język ("language"), pronounced IPA: [ˈjɛ̃zɨk]
mięso ("meat"), pronounced IPA: [ˈmjɛ̃sɔ]
ciężki ("heavy", "hard"), pronounced IPA: [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 IPA: [ˈvjɛntsɛj] rather than [ˈvjɛ̃tsɛj]
sędzia ("judge", "referee"), pronounced IPA: [ˈsɛndʑa]
głęboki ("deep"), pronounced IPA: [gwɛmˈbɔki]

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,

Evolution
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

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

The ISO basic Latin alphabet
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 ÉéÈèĔĕÊêẾếỀềỄễỂểĚěËëẼẽĖėȨȩḜḝĘęĒēḖḗḔḕẺẻȄȅȆȇẸẹỆệḘḙḚḛɆɇᶒ Letters using ogonek sign ĄąĘęĮįǪǫŲų history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters

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News:

Ę

Contents

In Polish

History

Alternations

Audio examples

Other languages

Computer use

See also