Ą

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.

The medieval vowel, along with its short counterpart, evolved in turn from the merged nasal *ę and *ǫ of Late Proto-Slavic.

long /ã/ → /ɔŋ/, /ɔn/, /ɔm/…, written ⟨ą⟩ Another explanation is connected to the adoption of the Old Czech-style orthography of the Latin alphabet to write 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.

Nasal an forms are now pronounced [aː], as in sąrašas (list) and san-grąža (turnover, return).