Ą ą
«ą» is a vowel of the Polish script, read as “nasal oh — "on" said through the nose”. A nasal o: the air escapes through the nose, so the ear catches "own" — or "ohm" before b and p. Word-finally it stays nasal with the lips apart: idą, they go, ends close to a nasal "-dow", never with an m. For example, in the word “mąka” — flour. The Polish alphabet has 32 letters in total. The little tail under the letter marks a nasal sound, and Polish has sounds like that in plenty. Swallow the tail and you will still be understood — but you will be heard as a foreigner. It appears, for example, in the word “skąd jesteś?” — where are you from?
In short
| Character | Ą ą |
| Sound | nasal oh — "on" said through the nose |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 2nd of 32, its neighbours in the course are a and b, appears in 238 words of this site.
How to type Ą ą
- On a phone: add the Polish keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+0105 and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 0105.
- Unicode code points: ą — U+0105, Ą — U+0104. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
A nasal o: the air escapes through the nose, so the ear catches "own" — or "ohm" before b and p. Word-finally it stays nasal with the lips apart: idą, they go, ends close to a nasal "-dow", never with an m
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- mąkaflour
The character in the “polish tails and strokes” group
Nine signs: two nasals (ą, ę), three soft ones (ć, ś, ź — with ń), ó, ł, and their dots and tails. A tail marks a nasal sound, a stroke marks softness, a dot is history.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «ą» it is “nasal oh — "on" said through the nose”, as in the word “mąka”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 32 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Polish character ą read?
As “nasal oh — "on" said through the nose” — it is a vowel of the Polish script. A nasal o: the air escapes through the nose, so the ear catches "own" — or "ohm" before b and p. Word-finally it stays nasal with the lips apart: idą, they go, ends close to a nasal "-dow", never with an m. For example, in the word “mąka” — flour.