Ą

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].

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 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:

• Creek
• Navajo
• Western Apache
• Chiricahua
• Mescalero
• Gwich'in
• Tutchone

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.

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.

• Ę
• Ogonek
• Kashubian alphabet
• Lithuanian alphabet
• Elfdalian alphabet
• Polish phonology
• Polish alphabet
• Yus