Eng (letter)

Ŋ (minuscule: ŋ), known as eng, agma, or engma, is a Latin-script letter used to represent a voiced velar nasal, as in sing (), ring (), or thing (), in the written form of some languages and in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

In Washo, lower-case represents a typical sound, while upper-case represents a voiceless sound. This convention comes from Americanist phonetic notation.

In Western Inland dialects of Northern Sámi, eng represents a palatal nasal like due to a merger; in other dialects, eng represents a velar nasal.

History

The First Grammatical Treatise, a 12th-century work on the phonology of the Old Icelandic language, uses a single grapheme for the eng sound, shaped like a g with a stroke .

Alexander Gill the Elder uses an uppercase G with a hooked tail and a lowercase n with the hooked tail of a script g for the same sound in Logonomia Anglica in 1619. William Holder uses the letter in Elements of Speech: An Essay of Inquiry into the Natural Production of Letters, published in 1669, but it was not printed as intended; he indicates in his errata that “there was intended a character for Ng, viz., n with a tail like that of g, which must be understood where the Printer has imitated it by n or y”.

It was later used in Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet, with its current phonetic value.

Appearance

Lowercase eng is derived from n, with the addition of a hook to the right leg, somewhat like that of j or a g. Nowadays, the uppercase has two main variants: it can be based on the usual uppercase N, with a hook added (or "N-form"); or it can be an enlarged version of the lowercase (or "n-form"). The former is preferred in Sami languages that use it, the latter in African languages, such as in Shona from 1931 to 1955, and several in west and central Africa currently. In Isaac Pitman’s Phonotypic Alphabet, the uppercase had a reversed-N form.

Early printers, lacking a specific sort for eng, sometimes approximated it by rotating a capital G or substituting a Greek letter eta , before modified to present form (the latter may be encoded as the Latin letter n with long right leg to distinguish it from the Greek letter).

Pronunciation of words containing eng sound

In most languages eng is absent in the Latin alphabet but its sound can be present in the letter n in words. In English, it is heard in the potential digraphs nc (hard c), ng (hard g), nk, nq and nx, often at the end of words. For the pronunciation of ng with eng, it can be in words such as singer and hanged and when it is in final position or in words such as finger and angle.

In British English, n is pronounced eng in the prefixes en- and in- when they are followed by c, g and q, as in encroachment, engagement, enquiry, incursion, ingredient, inquiry and others. In other English dialects, the n is pronounced instead. In many British dialects, the ng in strength and length is simply pronounced , with g a silent letter, and the ng is otherwise pronounced in those words.

Usage

Technical transcription

Americanist phonetic notation, where it may also represent a uvular nasal.
Sometimes for the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages
International Phonetic Alphabet, where it represent a voiced velar nasal
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet including
Teuthonista phonetic transcription system uses
Rheinische Dokumenta, a phonetic alphabet for many West Central German dialects, Low Rhenish, and few related languages.

Vernacular orthographies

thumb|class=skin-invert-image|[[Yañalif|Janalif variant of eng is represented as N with descender. An equivalent version (En with descender) is used in the Cyrillic alphabet.]]

Languages marked † no longer use eng, but formerly did.

African languages
Bari
Bemba
Dagbani
Dinka
Efik
Ewe
Frafra
Fula
Ganda
Manding languages
Nuer
Shona language†
Songhay languages
Wolof
Zarma
American languages
Inupiat
Lakota
O'odham
Austroasiatic languages
Tonga
Australian Aboriginal languages
Bandjalang
Yolŋu
Languages of China
Zhuang† (replaced by the digraph ng in 1986)
Hanyu Pinyin † used ŋ as a short hand form of ng.
Polynesian languages (all three using either ⟨g⟩ or ⟨ng⟩ when ⟨ŋ⟩ is not available on the keyboard)
Anutan language
Eɱae language
Rapa Nui language
Sami languages
Inari Sami
Lule Sami
Northern Sami
Ume Sami
Skolt Sami
Kildin Sami (during Latinisation in the 1930s)
Turkic languages during Latinisation in the 1930s used Ꞑ ꞑ, sometimes considered a variant of eng.
Kazakh language† (2019 revision of the Latin alphabet; replaced with Ñ in the April 2021 proposal)
Mapuche language (Wirizüŋun script)
Kalam languages
Kalam language

Computer encoding

Eng is encoded in Unicode as U+014A <small>LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ENG</small> and U+014B <small>LATIN SMALL LETTER ENG</small>, part of the Latin Extended-A range. In ISO 8859-4 (Latin-4) it's located at BD (uppercase) and BF (lowercase).

In African languages such as Bemba, ng (with an apostrophe) is widely used as a substitute in media where eng is hard to reproduce.

Gallery

File:Ngummi.png|An 1856 text in Gamilaraay, using a rotated capital G as a substitute for ŋ.

File:Kiŋston Bildiŋz, near Bath Abbey - geograph.org.uk - 717317.jpg|Uppercase eng with the reversed-N-form (almost resembles Cyrillic "и") on the Kingston Buildings in Bath, UK.

File:Ŋ in William Ridley (1875), Kámilarói, and other Australian languages - p.4.png|Lowercase and uppercase eng with the reversed-N-form of the uppercase used in a 1875 Gamilaraay text.

File:Ŋ in William Ridley (1875), Kámilarói, and other Australian languages - p.40.png|Eng used in a 1875 Gamilaraay text.

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File:Italic eng (with tail like double storey g).svg|Italic ŋ based on double-storey g as used in Horatio Hale's Ethnography and Philology (1846).

Nhooks.svg|<big><big>ᶇ  ɲ ɳ</big></big>: four "n"-based IPA symbols for nasal sounds.

</gallery>

Forms

Note that all forms still have ŋ as a lowercase.<gallery>

File:Latin letter Eng (first variant of capital form).svg|First variant of capital form, appears in some sans-serif fonts

File:Latin letter Eng (second variant of capital form).svg|Second variant, appears in most fonts

File:Latin letter Eng (third variant of capital form).svg|Third variant resembling greek letter eta (η)

File:Latin letter Eng (fourth variant of capital form).svg|Fourth variant

File:Latin letter Eng (fifth variant of capital form).svg|Fifth variant, almost resembles Cyrillic "и" and used in Unifon

File:Latin letter Eng (sixth variant of capital form).svg|Sixth variant, completely resembles Cyrillic "и"

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