Ę (minuscule: ę; Polish E z ogonkiem, "E with a little tail"; Lithuanian e nosinė, "e nasal") is a letter in the Polish alphabet, Lithuanian alphabet, and the Dalecarlian alphabet. It is used in Navajo to represent the nasal vowel ẽ. In Latin, Irish, and Old Norse palaeography, it is known as E caudata (tailed E).
Contents
In Polish
In Polish, ę comes after e in the alphabet but is never the start of a word. It is most commonly pronounced as /ɛw̃/, /ɛn/, /ɛm/, or /ɛ/, depending on the context.
Unlike in French, a Polish nasal vowel is asynchronous and so is 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,
Before all stops and affricates, it is pronounced as an oral vowel + nasal consonant, with /ɛn/ before most consonants, while /ɛm/ appears before p, b, w, or f; and /ɛɲ/ appears before palatal consonants ć, dź; before palatal sibilants ś and ź it is either /ɛɲ/ or (more frequently) [ɛj͂]. For example,
If ę is the final letter of a word, or if it is followed by either L or Ł, some 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 nonstandard speaking is a "trademark" of the former Polish President Lech Wałęsa, and some of his sentences, often transcribed to reflect the pronunciation, 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:
Audio examples
Lithuanian
With some forms of noun, ę is used at the end of the word to construct accusative case, as in eglę, accusative of eglė (spruce). It is also used when converting the past tense verb into participle (tempęs - somebody who has pulled (lit. tempė) in the past.
Nasal en/em forms have transitioned to being pronounced [e:] as in kęsti (to suffer) - kenčia (is suffering or suffers) so ę is no longer nasal.
In some cases ą, ę and į (never ė) may be used in different forms interchangeably, as in tąsa (extension) - tęsia (extends) - tįsoti (to lie extended). Finally, some verbs have it in the middle of the word, only in the present tense (gęsta - is going off (fire, light), but not užgeso (went off).
Unlike with į or ą, no known Lithuanian word starts with ę.