Ą should not be confused with A with ogonek (Cyrillic).
Ą (minuscule: ą) is a letter in the Polish, Kashubian, Lithuanian, Creek, Navajo, Western Apache, Chiricahua, Osage, Hocąk, Mescalero, Gwich'in, Tutchone, and Elfdalian alphabets. It is formed from the letter a and an ogonek ("little tail") and usually, except in modern Lithuanian and Polish, denotes a nasal a sound.
In the Polish alphabet, ą comes after a, but never appears at the beginning of a word. Originally, ą used to represent a nasal a sound, but in modern times, its pronunciation has shifted to a nasal o sound. The letter does not have one determined pronunciation and instead, its pronunciation is dependent on the sounds it is followed by.
| Pronunciation | Example | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phonemic | Phonetic | Orthography | Pronunciation(phonemic) | Pronunciation(phonetic) | ||
| ą + f, w, s, z, sz, ż, rz, h, ch; word-finally | pronounced as //ɔŋ// | pronounced as /[ɔw̃]/ | ('they are') | pronounced as //sɔŋ// | pronounced as /[sɔw̃]/ | |
| ą + k, g | pronounced as /[ɔŋ]/ | ('flour') | pronounced as //ˈmɔŋka// | pronounced as /[ˈmɔŋka]/ | ||
| ą + t, d, c, dz, cz, dż | pronounced as //ɔn// | pronounced as /[ɔn̪]/ | ('error') | pronounced as //bwɔnt// | pronounced as /[bwɔn̪t̪]/ | |
| ą + p, b | pronounced as //ɔm// | pronounced as /[ɔm]/ | ('tooth') | pronounced as //zɔmp// | pronounced as /[zɔmp]/ | |
| ą + ś, ź, ć, dź, si, zi, ci, dzi | pronounced as //ɔɲ// | pronounced as /[ɔj̃]/ | ('be') | pronounced as //bɔɲt͡ɕ// | pronounced as /[bɔj̃t͡ɕ]/ | |
| ą + l, ł | pronounced as //ɔ// | pronounced as /[ɔ]/ | wziął ('he took') | pronounced as //vʑɔw// | pronounced as /[vʑɔw]/ | |
Polish ą sound evolved from a long nasal a sound of medieval Polish into a short nasal o sound in the modern language. The medieval vowel, along with its short counterpart, evolved in turn from the merged nasal *ę and *ǫ of Late Proto-Slavic.
| Early Proto-Slavic |
| |
| Late Proto-Slavic | pronounced as //ẽ// and pronounced as //õ//, transcribed and | |
| Medieval Polish | short and long pronounced as //ã//, sometimes written approx. | |
| Modern Polish | short pronounced as //ã// → pronounced as //ɛŋ//, pronounced as //ɛn//, pronounced as //ɛm//…, written long pronounced as //ã// → pronounced as //ɔŋ//, pronounced as //ɔn//, pronounced as //ɔm//…, written |
Another explanation is connected to the adoption of the Old Czech-style orthography of the Latin alphabet to write Polish at the turn of the 16th century. In Poland-Lithuania, Latin still dominated in writing in the Kingdom of Poland, and the Cyrillic-based vernacular of Ruthenian had been in official use in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since the 13th century. In pronunciation, the Church Cyrillic letter big yus (Ѫ ѫ) corresponds to the pronunciation of the Polish ą. However, it is little yus (Ѧ ѧ), which is phonetically similar to ę and, more importantly, shares visual resemblances with the Latin alphabet initial letter (A, a) plus an ogonek, that some believe led to ogonek's introduction. This, according to proponents of the theory, resulted in the letter ą for denoting the nasal o, when it logically should have been ǫ rather than ą. When the ogonek had already been in place as the diacritic for marking nasality in vowels, it was appended to e, resulting in ę for nasal e.[1]
The letter often alternates with Polish: [[ę]].
However, in words derived from Polish: rząd ('government'), the vowel does not change. Thus, Polish: rządu (genitive of Polish: rząd) retains the Polish: ą, e.g., Polish: rozporządzenie rządu ('government's ordinance').
In modern Lithuanian, it is no longer nasal and is now pronounced as a long a. It is the second letter of the Lithuanian alphabet called Lithuanian: a nosinė (nasal a).
The letter is most often found at the end of the noun to construct an ending of accusative case, as in Lithuanian: aslą pronounced as /[aːslaː]/, the accusative of Lithuanian: asla (ground, floor); both a and ą in Lithuanian: aslą are pronounced pronounced as /[aː]/ (a long a). Thus, ą is used to distinguish between the transcription of accusative and the nominative cases of the noun Lithuanian: asla.
It is also used when converting present tense verbs into participles, e.g., (Lithuanian: matąs (somebody who is seeing (Lithuanian: matyti) right now).
Nasal an forms are now pronounced pronounced as /[aː]/, as in Lithuanian: sąrašas (list) and Lithuanian: san-grąža (turnover, return).
In some cases, ą, ę and į (but never ė) may be used in different forms, as in Lithuanian: tąsa (extension) – Lithuanian: tęsia (extends) – Lithuanian: tįsoti (to lie extended). Finally, some verbs have it in the middle of a word but only in the present tense, e.g., (Lithuanian: bąla (is getting white), but not Lithuanian: pabalo (has become white).[2]
The letter can also be found at the beginning of several words, e.g., Lithuanian: ąsotis pronounced as /[aːsoːtis]/ (jug).
In some indigenous languages of the Americas, the letter denotes a nasal a sound:
The Elfdalian alphabet contains the letters that occur in the Swedish alphabet as well as various letters with ogonek to denote nasality. Ą and ą denote a nasal a sound.
Scholars who have reconstructed the Proto-Germanic language (the ancestor of all modern Germanic languages, spoken c. 500 BC – AD 500) use the letter ą to denote a nasal vowel.