Ą

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 and usually, except for modern Lithuanian and Polish, denotes a nasal a sound.

Polish

In Polish and Kashubian, ą is right after a in the alphabet but never appears at the beginning of a word. Originally ą was a nasal a but in modern times, its pronunciation has shifted to a nasal o sound. The letter doesn't simply have one determined pronunciation, but most often it will be pronounced /ɔw̃/, or just simply /ɔ/ followed by a nasal consonant with a place of articulation that appears in the Polish language. Therefore, ą will sometimes be pronounced as /ɔn/, /ɔm/, /ɔŋ/, /ɔɳ/, /ɔɲ/.

Unlike French but rather like Portuguese ão, nasal vowels in Polish are asynchronous: they are pronounced as an oral vowel + a nasal semivowel [ɔw̃] or a nasal vowel + a nasal semivowel. For the sake of simplicity, it is sometimes represented as /ɔ̃/:

  • obowiązek ("duty", "obligation"), pronounced [ɔbɔˈvʲɔw̃zɛk]
  • robią ("they are making"), [ˈrɔbʲɔw̃]
  • wciąż ("still"), [ˈft͡ɕɔw̃ʂ]

Before all stops and affricates, it is pronounced as an oral vowel + nasal consonant, with /ɔn/ appearing before most consonants and /ɔm/ before p or b:

  • kąpać ("to bathe") is pronounced [ˈkɔmpat͡ɕ]
  • pająk ("spider"), [ˈpajɔŋk]
  • bądź (imperative "be"), as in Bądź cierpliwy! ("Be patient!"), [ˈbɔɲt͡ɕ]
  • oglądając ("(by) watching"), [ɔɡlɔnˈdajɔnt͡s]

Loss of all nasal quality is rare with ą, occurring only before ł, thus, zajął [ˈzajɔw].

In dialects of some regions, ą in final position is also pronounced as /ɔm/; thus, robią is occasionally pronounced as [ˈrɔbʲɔm].

History

Polish ą evolved from being a long nasal a of medieval Polish into a short nasal o 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.

Evolution
Early Proto-Slavic *em/*en/*im/*in and *am/*an/*um/*un
Late Proto-Slavic /ẽ/ and /õ/, transcribed ę and ǫ
Medieval Polish short and long /ã/, sometimes written approx. ø
Modern Polish short /ã//ɛw̃/, /ɛn/, /ɛm/, written ę

long /ã//ɔw̃/, /ɔn/, /ɔm/, written ą

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]

Alternations

The letter often alternates with ę.

  • "tooth": ząbzęby ("teeth"),
    "snake": wążwęże ("snakes")
  • "husband" in nominative: mążz mężem ("with husband", in instrumental case)
  • "weight": ciężarciążyć ("to weigh down, to be a burden"),
    "month": miesiącmiesięczny ("monthly"),
    "a judge": sędziasądzić ("to judge, think")
  • "row" in nominative: rządcztery razy z rzędu ("four times in a row", genitive case)

However, in words derived from rząd ("government"), the vowel does not change. Thus, rządu (genitive of rząd) retains the ą, e.g., rozporządzenie rządu ("government's ordinance")

Audio examples

Lithuanian

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 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 aslą [aːslaː], the accusative of asla (ground, floor); both a and ą in aslą are pronounced [aː] (a long a). Thus, ą is used to distinguish between the transcription of accusative and the nominative cases of the noun asla.

It is also used when converting present tense verbs into participles, e.g., (matąs (somebody who is seeing (matyti) right now).

Nasal an/am forms are now pronounced [aː], as in sąrašas (list) and san-grąža (turnover, return).

In some cases, ą, ę and į (but 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 a word but only in the present tense, e.g., (bąla (is getting white), but not pabalo (has become white).[2]

The letter can also be found at the beginning of several words, e.g., ąsotis [a:so:tis] (jug).

The Americas

The ogonek in European languages is attached to the right leg of A.
In Native American languages, it's under the middle of A.

In some indigenous languages of the Americas, the letter denotes a nasal a sound:

Elfdalian

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.

Reconstructed language

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.

Computing codes

characterĄą
Unicode nameLATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH OGONEKLATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH OGONEK
character encodingdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode26001042610105
UTF-8196 132C4 84196 133C4 85
Numeric character referenceĄĄąą
CP 775181B5208D0
Windows-1250165A5185B9
ISO-8859-13 and Windows-1257192C0224E0
ISO-8859-2 and ISO-8859-4161A1177B1
Mac Central European1328413688

See also

References

  1. Tomasz Kamusella. 2019. Is hot air mightier than states?The big Central European history of a little tail (ogonek). New Eastern Europe. 12 Dec.
  2. http://algdas.blogas.lt/1140-1140.html
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.