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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 also used for reconstructing Proto-Germanic (e.g., for representing the ending of a- stem neuter nouns).
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, aside from the uncommon ąkły. 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 that follow it.
In some dialects, word-final ą is also pronounced as /ɔm/; thus, robią is occasionally pronounced as [ˈrɔbjɔm].
Polish ą sound (phoneme) 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.
The problem remained how to write this nasal sound (phoneme) with the use of Latin letters. First, the Old Czech-style orthography of the Latin alphabet was adopted for writing 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.
The letter often alternates with ę.
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').
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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 also used for reconstructing Proto-Germanic (e.g., for representing the ending of a- stem neuter nouns).
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, aside from the uncommon ąkły. 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 that follow it.
In some dialects, word-final ą is also pronounced as /ɔm/; thus, robią is occasionally pronounced as [ˈrɔbjɔm].
Polish ą sound (phoneme) 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.
The problem remained how to write this nasal sound (phoneme) with the use of Latin letters. First, the Old Czech-style orthography of the Latin alphabet was adopted for writing 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.
The letter often alternates with ę.
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').