Ogonek vs. Cedilla Accent

There are two types of hook accents which can appear under letters – the cedilla/cedille (French and other languages) and the ogonek (Polish and other languages). From a distance they appear similar, but the direction the hook faces is opposite in each case.

I’m writing about these two accents now because I did get myself tripped up this week when I was looking a character code. I think the best tip to remember is that ogoneks mostly appear on vowels (see below) and cedillas tend to appear on consonants

Origin of Ogonek

The term ogonek is a Polish term meaning “little tail” (actually a diminutive). It’s used to indicate a nasalized vowel in Polish and other Central European languages, but now the use of ogonek has spread to Native American spelling systems where the ogonek also indicated a nasal vowel.

FYI – nasal vowels are also found in languages like French (français = /frãse/) and Portugues (as in São), but their writing systems implemented different slutions.

Cedilla or Cedille?

Both are valid depending on context. The Unicode standard uses the term cedilla (as in “LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA” (U+00E7)). On the other hand, I first encountered this accent in French, so I tend to use the French term cedille. In French it’s used with the letter “c” to indicate that the letter should be pronounced as /s/ and not /k/ (despite normal spelling convention).

The cedilla is used in other languages/letters such as Turkish where S-cedilla ş = // or the sound “sh” and Latvian where a cedilla consonant is palatalized. For whatever reasons though, cedillas are used with consonants.

Entering Ogonek and Cedilla into Text

If you’re on a Mac, you can use the U.S. Extended keyboard and enter cedilla by pressing Control+C plus the letter. Ogonek is Control+M plus the letter.

If you’re on Windows, you can either activate a keyboard for the target language (e.g. French, Polish, Turkish) or you can use the Character Map.

Some Entity Codes

Ogonek with Vowel

Below are the HTML entity codes for vowels with ogonek. The first code in each cell is the decimal version. The second the hexadecimal version which also corresponds with the Unicode code point.

	A	E	I	O	U	Combine
Uppercase	Ą Ą Ć	Ę Ę Ę	Į Į Į	Ǫ Ǫ Ǫ	Ų Ų Ų	–̃ ̃ ̃
Lowercase	ą ą ą	ę ę ę	į į į	ǫ ǫ ǫ	ų ų ų	—

Cedilla with Consonants

Note that letter E with cedilla does exist. Therefore the some vowels can have either a cedilla or an ogonek.

Character Name	Character	Entity	Hex Entity
CEDILLA	¸	¸	&#x00B8
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA	Ç	Ç	&#x00C7
LATIN SMALL LETTER C WITH CEDILLA	ç	ç	&#x00E7
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D WITH CEDILLA	Ḑ	Ḑ	&#x1E10
LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH CEDILLA	ḑ	ḑ	&#x1E11
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH CEDILLA	Ȩ	Ȩ	&#x0228
LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH CEDILLA	ȩ	ȩ	&#x0229
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER G WITH CEDILLA	Ģ	Ģ	&#x0122
LATIN SMALL LETTER G WITH CEDILLA	ģ	ģ	&#x0123
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER H WITH CEDILLA	Ḩ	Ḩ	&#x1E28
LATIN SMALL LETTER H WITH CEDILLA	ḩ	ḩ	&#x1E29
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER K WITH CEDILLA	Ķ	Ķ	&#x0136
LATIN SMALL LETTER K WITH CEDILLA	ķ	ķ	&#x0137
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L WITH CEDILLA	Ļ	Ļ	&#x013B
LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH CEDILLA	ļ	ļ	&#x013C
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N WITH CEDILLA	Ņ	Ņ	&#x0145
LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH CEDILLA	ņ	ņ	&#x0146
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R WITH CEDILLA	Ŗ	Ŗ	&#x0156
LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH CEDILLA	ŗ	ŗ	&#x0157
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S WITH CEDILLA	Ş	Ş	&#x015E
LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH CEDILLA	ş	ş	&#x015F
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T WITH CEDILLA	Ţ	Ţ	&#x0162
LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH CEDILLA	ţ	ţ	&#x0163
COMBINING CEDILLA	̧	̧	&#x0327