Ę
Ę (
Polish
In the Polish alphabet, ę comes after e. It never appears word-initially, except for the onomatopoeia ęsi. It does not have one determined pronunciation and instead, its pronunciation is dependent on the sounds it is followed by.
Pronunciation
Position | Pronunciation | Example | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Phonemic | Phonetic | Orthography | Pronunciation
(phonemic) |
Pronunciation
(phonetic) | |
ę + f, w, s, z, sz, ż, rz, h, ch | /ɛŋ/ | [ɛw̃] | ⓘ ('bite') | /kɛŋs/ | [kɛw̃s] |
ę + k, g | [ɛŋ] | ⓘ ('fear') | /lɛŋk/ | [lɛŋk] | |
ę + t, d, c, dz, cz, dż | /ɛn/ | [ɛn̪] | ⓘ ('I will be') | /ˈbɛndɛ/ | [ˈbɛn̪d̪ɛ] |
ę + p, b | /ɛm/ | [ɛm] | ⓘ ('vulture') | /sɛmp/ | [sɛmp] |
ę + ś, ź, ć, dź, si, zi, ci, dzi | /ɛɲ/ | [ɛj̃] | ⓘ ('it will be') | /ˈbɛɲd͡ʑɛ/ | [ˈbɛj̃d͡ʑɛ] |
ę + l, ł; word-finally | /ɛ/ | [ɛ] | ⓘ ('you') | /t͡ɕɛ/ | [t͡ɕɛ] |
In some dialects, word-final ę is also pronounced as /ɛm/, causing robię to be occasionally pronounced as /ˈrɔbjɛm/. That nonstandard form is used by the former Polish president Lech Wałęsa. Some of his sentences that were respelled to reflect the pronunciation have entered popular language, e.g., Nie chcem, ale muszem (properly written Nie chcę, ale muszę; 'I don't want to, but I have to').
History
In
Polish ę sound evolved from the short nasal a of medieval Polish, which developed into a short nasal e in the modern language. The medieval vowel, along with its long counterpart, evolved in turn from the merged nasal *ę and *ǫ of Late
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/ → /ɛŋ/, /ɛn/, /ɛm/, written ⟨ę⟩ long /ã/ → /ɔŋ/, /ɔn/, /ɔm/, written ⟨ą⟩ |
Alternations
Ę often alternates with ą:
- 'husband': mąż → mężowie ('husbands'),
- 'error': błąd → błędy ('errors'),
- 'pigeon': gołąb → gołębie ('pigeons')
- 'oak' in )
- 'hands' in )
- 'five': pięć → piąty ('fifth')
Lithuanian
In Lithuanian, the ogonek, called the nosinė (literally, "nasal") mark, originally indicated vowel nasalization, but around the late 17th century, nasal vowels gradually evolved into the corresponding
The ogonek also helps to distinguish different grammatical forms which otherwise have the same written form but are pronounced differently. For example, for some forms of the noun, ę is used at the end of the word for the accusative case, as in eglę, accusative of eglė (spruce). It is also used to change past tense verb to the participle in the past, e.g., tempė to tempęs – somebody who has pulled.
In some cases, ą, ę and į (but never ė) may be used for different forms, as in tąsa (extension) – tęsia (extends) – tįsoti (to lie extended). Finally, some verbs have the letter in the middle of the word only in the present tense, e.g., gęsta ([fire, light] is going off) but not užgeso (went off).[1]
Unlike with į or ą, no Lithuanian word is known to start with ę.[2]
Computer use
Preview | Ę | ę | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH OGONEK | LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH OGONEK | ||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 280 | U+0118 | 281 | U+0119 |
UTF-8 | 196 152 | C4 98 | 196 153 | C4 99 |
Numeric character reference | Ę |
Ę |
ę |
ę |
Named character reference | Ę | ę | ||
ISO 8859-4 |
202 | CA | 234 | EA |
ISO 8859-10 |
221 | DD | 253 | FD |
See also
References
- ^ "Gramatika". Algdo blogas-svetainė (in Lithuanian). Archived from the original on 2013-02-21.
- ^ "Lietuviški žodžiai iš e raidės". rimai.dainutekstai.lt (in Lithuanian). Archived from the original on 2013-02-21.