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Ę (minuscule: ę) is a letter in the Polish alphabet and Lithuanian alphabet. It is formed from the letter e and an ogonek. In Latin and Irish palaeography, it is known as E caudata.
[edit] In PolishIn 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,
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,
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]. [edit] HistoryPolish 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,
[edit] Alternationsę often alternates with ą, for example:
[edit] Audio examples[edit] Other languages
[edit] Computer use
[edit] See also
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