The tail or ( ; Polish: , "little tail",

diminutive A diminutive is a word obtained by modifying a root word to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment, and sometimes to belittle s ...

of ) is a

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

used in several

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an languages, and directly under a vowel in several

Native American languages The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas Pre-Columbian era, before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while m ...

. It is also placed on the lower right corner of consonants in some Latin transcriptions of various indigenous languages of the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, i ...

mountains. An ogonek can also be attached to the bottom of a vowel in

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

or Old Icelandic to show length or vowel affection. For example, in Old Norse, ''ǫ'' represents the Old Norwegian vowel , which in Old Icelandic merges with '' ø'' ‹ö› and in modern Scandinavian languages is represented by the letter '' å''.

Use

Avestan Avestan ( ) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family and was First language, originally spoken during the Avestan period, Old ...

romanization (letters ''ą'', ''ą̇'', ''m̨'') * Cahto (''ą'', ''ę'') * Cayuga (''ę'', ''ǫ'') *

Chickasaw The Chickasaw ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, United States. Their traditional territory was in northern Mississippi, northwestern and northern Alabama, western Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky. Their language is ...

(''ą'', ''į'', ''ǫ'') * Chipewyan (''ą ąą ę ęę ę̈ ę̈ę̈ ı̨ ı̨ı̨ ǫ ǫǫ ų ųų'') * Dadibi (''ą'', ''ę'', ''į'', ''ǫ'') * Dogrib (''ą'', ''ąą'', ''ę'', ''ęę'', ''ı̨'', ''ı̨ı̨'', ''ǫ'', ''ǫǫ'', ''ų'', ''ųų'') * Elfdalian (''ą'', ''ę'', ''į'', ''ų'', ''y̨'' and ''ą̊'') * some romanizations of

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

(''ą'', ''ę'', ''ǫ'') * Ho-Chunk (''ą'', ''ąą'', ''į'', ''įį'', ''ų'', ''ųų'') * etymological Interslavic (''ę'', ''ų'') * Kashubian (''ą'') * scholarly transcriptions of

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Colloquial, Popular, Spoken or Vernacular Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. ''Vulgar Latin'' a ...

and Proto-Romance (''ę, ǫ'') * Lithuanian (''ą'', ''ę'', ''į'', ''ų'') * Navajo (''ą ą́ ąą ą́ą́ ę ę́ ęę ę́ę́ į į́ įį į́į́ ǫ ǫ́ ǫǫ ǫ́ǫ́'') *

Ojibwe The Ojibwe (; Ojibwe writing systems#Ojibwe syllabics, syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the Great Plains, n ...

in older Romanization standards, representing either

nasalization In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation in British English) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . ...

or vowel backing (''ą'', ''ąą'', ''ą́'', ''ę'', ''įį'', ''ǫǫ'') * scholarly transcriptions of

Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...

and

Proto-Slavic Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium BC through the 6th ...

(''ę'', ''ǫ'') *

(''ǫ'' , ''ǫ́'' , ''o᷎'', ''ǫ᷎''), (''ę'' , ''æ'' ), (Alternatively, ''ą'', ''ę'', ''ǫ'', ''ø̨'', etc. instead represent any nasalized vowel (, , , , etc.) corresponding to the Norse runic letter Áss and the Proto-Norse runic letter AnsuR.) Also (''t̨'') *

Old Norwegian Old Norwegian ( and ), also called Norwegian Norse, is an early form of the Norwegian language that was spoken between the 11th and 14th century; it is a transitional stage between Old West Norse and Middle Norwegian. Its distinction from O ...

and Old Icelandic (''æ̨'', ''ø̨'', ''a᷎'', ''e᷎'', ''i᷎'', ''o᷎'', ''ø᷎'', ''u᷎'') * Onondaga dialects (''ę'', ''ǫ''), (Alternatively, ''eñ'' and ''oñ'' can also be used. ''ų'' is sometimes used for ''ǫ'') * Polish (letters '' ą'', '' ę'') * Rheinische Dokumenta (''ą̈'', ''ǫ'', ''ǫ̈'', ''ą̈ą̈'', ''ǫǫ'', ''ǫ̈ǫ̈'') * Sierra Otomi (''ą'', ''į'', ''ę'', ''ǫ'', ''ų'') * Tutchone (''į, ų, ų̈, ę, ą̈, ǫ, ą'') Example in Polish: : : : — The ox asks him: "Mr. beetle, why do you buzz like that in the thicket?" :: — Jan Brzechwa, '' Chrząszcz'' Example in Cayuga: : — we will become poor Example in Chickasaw: : - I am walking Example in Dogrib: : — native people Example in Lithuanian: : : :: — Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas, ''Margi sakalai'' Example in Elfdalian: :"Ja, eð war įe plåg að gęslkallum, dar eð war slaik uondlostjyner i gęslun." :: — Vikar Margit Andersdotter, ''I fäbodlivet i gamla tider''.

Values

Nasalization

The use of the ogonek to indicate nasality is common in the transcription of the

indigenous languages of the Americas The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while many more are now e ...

. This usage originated in the orthographies created by Christian missionaries to transcribe these languages. Later, the practice was continued by Americanist anthropologists and linguists who still, to the present day, follow this convention in phonetic transcription (see Americanist phonetic notation). The ogonek is also used to indicate a nasalized vowel in Polish, academic transliteration of Proto-Germanic,

, Navajo, Western Apache, Chiricahua, Tłįchǫ Yatiì, Slavey, Dëne Sųłiné and Elfdalian. In Polish, ''ę'' is nasalized ''e''; however, ''ą'' is nasalized ''o'', not ''a'', because of a vowel shift: ''ą'', originally a long nasal ''a'', turned into a short nasal ''o'' when the distinction in vowel quantity disappeared.

Length

In Lithuanian, the nosinė (literally, "nasal") mark originally indicated vowel nasalization but around late 17th and early 18th century, nasal vowels gradually evolved into the corresponding long non-nasal vowels in most dialects. Thus, the mark is now ''de facto'' an indicator of vowel length (the length of etymologically non-nasal vowels is marked differently or not marked at all). The mark also helps to distinguish different grammatical forms with otherwise the same written form (often with a different word stress, which is not indicated directly in the standard orthography).

Lowered articulation

Between 1927 and 1989, the ogonek denoted lowering in

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s, and, since 1976, in

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

s as well, in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

(IPA). While the obsolete diacritic has also been identified as the left half ring diacritic , many publications of the IPA used the ogonek. In Rheinische Dokumenta, it marks vowels that are more open than those denoted by their base letters Ää, Oo, Öö. In two cases, it can be combined with umlaut marks.

Similar diacritics

E caudata and o caudata

The '' E caudata'' (''ę''), a symbol similar to an ''e'' with ogonek, evolved from a ligature of ''a'' and ''e'' in medieval scripts, in

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

and Irish

palaeography Palaeography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, UK) or paleography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, US) (ultimately from , , 'old', and , , 'to write') is the study and academic disciplin ...

. The '' O caudata'' of

(letter ''ǫ'', with ''ǫ́'') is used to write the open-mid back rounded vowel, . Medieval Nordic manuscripts show this 'hook' in both directions, in combination with several vowels. Despite this distinction, the term 'ogonek' is sometimes used in discussions of typesetting and encoding Norse texts, as ''o caudata'' is typographically identical to o with ogonek. Similarly, the ''E caudata'' was sometimes used to designate the Norse vowel or .

Cedilla and comma

The ogonek is functionally equivalent to the

cedilla A cedilla ( ; from Spanish language, Spanish ', "small ''ceda''", i.e. small "z"), or cedille (from French , ), is a hook or tail () added under certain letters (as a diacritic, diacritical mark) to indicate that their pronunciation is modif ...

and

comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight, but inclined from the vertical; others give it the appearance of a miniature fille ...

diacritic marks. If two of these three are used within the same orthography their respective use is restricted to certain classes of letters, i.e. usually the ogonek is used with vowels whereas the cedilla is applied to consonants. In handwritten text, the marks may even look the same.

Superscript ogonek

In Old Norse and Old Icelandic manuscripts, there is an over-hook or curl that may be considered a variant of the ogonek. It occurs on the letters a᷎ e᷎ i᷎ o᷎ ø᷎ u᷎.

Letters with ogonek

Typographical notes

The ogonek should be almost the same size as a descender (relatively, its size in larger type may be significantly shorter), and should not be confused with the cedilla or comma diacritics used in other languages.

Encoding

Because attaching an ogonek does not affect the shape of the base letter, Unicode covers it with a combining diacritic, U+0328. There are a number of precomposed legacy characters, but new ones are not being added to Unicode (e.g. for or ).

LaTeX2e

In LaTeX2e, macro \k will typeset a letter with ogonek, if it is supported by the font encoding, e.g. \k will typeset ''ą''. (The default LaTeX OT1 encoding does not support it, but the newer T1 one does. It may be enabled by saying

\usepackage 1/code> in the preamble.)

However, \k rather places the diacritic "right-aligned" with the carrying ''e'' (ę), suitably for Polish, while \textogonekcentered horizontally ''centers'' the diacritic with respect to the carrier, suitably for Native American Languages as well as for  e caudata and o caudata. So \textogonekcentered better fits the latter purposes. Actually, \k (for ǫ) is defined to result in \textogonekcentered, and \k is defined to result in \textogonekcentered.See t1enc.def in LaTeX2e distributions.

The package  TIPA, activated by using the command "\usepackage", offers a different way: "\textpolhook" will produce ''ą''.


  References 



  External links 



Diacritics Project — All you need to design a font with correct accents



Förslag till en enhetlig stavning för älvdalska (March, 2005)

w3schools.com — UTF-8 Latin Extended A


{{Latin script, , ogonek

 Latin-script diacritics
 Lithuanian language
 Diakrytyka