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The (; Polish: , "little tail",
diminutive A diminutive is a root word that has been modified 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. A (abbreviated ) is a word-formati ...
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 ''diacriti ...
hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
used in several
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
an languages, and directly under a vowel in several
Native American languages Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...
. 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 between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, mainly comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and parts of Southern Russia. The Caucasus Mountains, including the Greater Caucasus range, have historically ...
mountains. An ogonek can also be attached to the bottom of a vowel in
Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is 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 of Scandinavia and t ...
–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

* Abaza (''s̨'', ''z̨'', ''c̨'', ''c̨, ''j̨'') * Abkhaz (''s̨'', ''s̨u'', ''z̨'', ''z̨u'', ''c̨'', ''c̨u'', ''c̨, ''c̨'u'', ''j̨'', ''j̨u'') * Adyghe (''s̨'', ''z̨'') * Archi (''ł̨'', ''ɫ̨'') * Numerous
Athabaskan languages Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific C ...
, including
Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...
and Dogrib (''ą'', ''ą́'', ''ę'', ''ę́'', ''į'', ''į́'', ''ǫ'', ''ǫ́'', ''ų'', ''ų́'', ''ɛ̨'') * Cayuga (letters ''ę'', ''ǫ'') * Dadibi (''ą'', ''ę'', ''į'', ''ǫ'') *
Elfdalian Elfdalian or Övdalian ( or , pronounced in Elfdalian, or in Swedish) is a North Germanic language spoken by up to 3,000 people who live or have grown up in the locality of Älvdalen ('), which is located in the southeastern part of Älvdale ...
(''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 ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
(''ą'', ''ę'', ''ǫ'') * Ho-Chunk (''ą'', ''ąą'', ''į'', ''įį'', ''ų'', ''ųų'') * Kabardian (''s̨'', ''s̨, ''z̨'') * Kashubian (''ą'') * scholarly transcriptions of
Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve ...
and
Proto-Romance Proto-Romance is the comparatively reconstructed ancestor of all Romance languages. It reflects a late variety of spoken Latin prior to regional fragmentation. Phonology Vowels Monophthongs Diphthong The only phonemic diphthong was ...
(''ę, ǫ'') * Lithuanian (''ą'', ''ę'', ''į'', ''ų'') *
Ojibwe The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
in older Romanization standards, representing either
nasalization In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) 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 . In the Internationa ...
or vowel backing (''ą'', ''ąą'', ''ą́'', ''ę'', ''įį'', ''ǫǫ'') * scholarly transcriptions of
Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with Standard language, standardizing the lan ...
and
Proto-Slavic Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the Attested language, unattested, linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately ...
(''ę'', ''ǫ'') *
Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is 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 of Scandinavia and t ...
(''ǫ'' , ''ǫ́'' , ''o᷎'', ''ǫ᷎''), (''ę'' , ''æ'' ), (Alternatively, ''ą'', etc. instead represent any nasalized vowel (, etc.) corresponding to the Norse runic letter Áss and the Proto-Norse runic letter AnsuR.) *
Old Norwegian nn, gamalnorsk , region = Kingdom of Norway (872–1397) , era = 11th–14th century , familycolor = Indo-European , fam2 = Germanic , fam3 = North Germanic , fam4 = West Scandinavian , fam5 ...
and Old Icelandic (''æ̨'', ''ø̨'', ''a᷎'', ''e᷎'', ''i᷎'', ''o᷎'', ''ø᷎'', ''u᷎'') *
Onondaga Onondaga may refer to: Native American/First Nations * Onondaga people, a Native American/First Nations people and one of the five founding nations of the Iroquois League * Onondaga (village), Onondaga settlement and traditional Iroquois capita ...
dialects (''ę'', ''ǫ''), (Alternatively, ''eñ'' and ''oñ'' can also be used. ''ų'' is sometimes used for ''ǫ'') *
Otomi The Otomi (; es, Otomí ) are an indigenous people of Mexico inhabiting the central Mexican Plateau (Altiplano) region. The Otomi are an indigenous people of Mexico who inhabit a discontinuous territory in central Mexico. They are linguisticall ...
dialects (''ą'', ''į'', ''ɛ̨'') *
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
(letters '' ą'', '' ę'') *
Rheinische Dokumenta The Rheinische Dokumenta () is a phonetic writing system developed in the early 1980s by a working group of academics, linguists, local language experts, and local language speakers of the Rhineland. It was presented to the public in 1986 by the L ...
(''ą̈'', ''ǫ'', ''ǫ̈'', ''ą̈ą̈'', ''ǫǫ'', ''ǫ̈ǫ̈'') *
Shapsugh The Shapsug ( ady, шапсыгъ , russian: шапсуги, tr, Şapsığlar, ar, الشابسوغ, he, שפסוגים) (also known as the Shapsugh or Shapsogh) are one of the twelve major Circassian tribes. Historically, the Shapsug tribe ...
(''s̨'', ''s̨u'', ''z̨'', ''z̨u'', ''c̨u'', ''c̨ɦu'') * Tawlu (''n̨'') * Ubykh (''s̨'', ''s̨u'', ''z̨'', ''z̨u'', ''c̨'', ''c̨u'', ''c̨, ''c̨'u'', ''j̨'', ''j̨u'') Example in Polish: : : : — The ox asks him: "Mr. beetle, why do you buzz like that in the thicket?" :: —
Jan Brzechwa Jan Brzechwa (), (15 August 1898 – 2 July 1966) was a Polish poet, author and lawyer, known mostly for his contribution to children's literature. He was born Jan Wiktor Lesman to a Polish family of Jewish descent.
, '' Chrząszcz'' Example in Cayuga: : — we will become poor Example in Dogrib: : — native people Example in Lithuanian: : : :: —
Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas Vincas Mykolaitis, known by his pen name Putinas (literally '' Viburnum'') (6 January 1893 in Pilotiškės, Suwałki Governorate – 7 June 1967 in Kačerginė), was a Lithuanian poet and writer. He was also a priest, but renounced his priesthoo ...
, ''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''. Example in Western Apache: : — created


Values


Nasalization

The use of the ogonek to indicate nasality is common in the transcription of the
indigenous languages of the Americas Over a thousand indigenous languages are spoken by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. These languages cannot all be demonstrated to be related to each other and are classified into a hundred or so language families (including a large numbe ...
. 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 Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American ...
). The ogonek is also used to indicate a nasalized vowel in Polish, academic transliteration of Proto-Germanic,
Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic () was the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language. Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with Standard language, standardizing the lan ...
, Navajo, Western Apache, Chiricahua, Tłįch Yatiì,
Slavey The Slavey (also Slave and South Slavey) are a First Nations indigenous peoples of the Dene group, indigenous to the Great Slave Lake region, in Canada's Northwest Territories, and extending into northeastern British Columbia and northwestern ...
, 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 Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...
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 phonology and phonetics, raising is a sound change in which a vowel or consonant becomes higher or raised, meaning that the tongue becomes more elevated or positioned closer to the roof of the mouth than before. The opposite effect is known ...
in
vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
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. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
s as well, in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
(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 The Rheinische Dokumenta () is a phonetic writing system developed in the early 1980s by a working group of academics, linguists, local language experts, and local language speakers of the Rhineland. It was presented to the public in 1986 by the L ...
, 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 Ligature may refer to: * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure ** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry * Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...
of ''a'' and ''e'' in medieval scripts, in
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and
Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
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 grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") ...
. The '' O caudata'' of
Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is 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 of Scandinavia and t ...
(letter ''ǫ'', with ''ǫ́'') is used to write the
open-mid back rounded vowel The open-mid back rounded vowel, or low-mid back rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The IPA symbol is a turned letter ''c'' a ...
, . 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 and
comma The comma is a punctuation mark that appears in several variants in different languages. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark () in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline ...
diacritic marks 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 ''diacriti ...
. 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 In typography and handwriting, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font. For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the ''v'' c ...
(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 Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperm ...
, 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