Eng (letter)

Eng or engma (capital: Ŋ, lowercase: ŋ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, used to represent a velar nasal (as in English singing) in the written form of some languages and in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

History

This letter was designed by Alexander Gill the Elder in 1619. 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. The uppercase has two 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^{[citation needed]}.

An 1856 text in Gamilaraay, using a rotated capital G as a substitute for ŋ.

Early printers, lacking a specific glyph for eng, sometimes approximated it by rotating a capital G, or by substituting a Greek eta (η) for it.

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
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet
• Rheinische Dokumenta, a phonetic alphabet for many West Central German, the Low Rhenish, and few related languages

Vernacular orthographies

Janalif variant of Eng is represented as N with descender.

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

• African languages
  • Bari
  • Dinka
  • Ewe
  • Fula
  • Ganda
  • Manding languages
  • Songhay languages
  • Wolof
• American languages
  • O'odham
• Australian Aboriginal languages
  • Bandjalang
  • Yolngu
• Languages of China
  • Zhuang† (replaced by the digraph ng in 1986)
• Sami languages
  • Inari Sami
  • Lule Sami
  • Northern Sami
  • Skolt Sami
• Turkic languages during Latinisation (USSR) used Ꞑ ꞑ, sometimes considered a variant of Eng.

Computer encoding

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

See also

• Ng (digraph)
• Nh (digraph)

Similar Latin letters:

• Ƞ ƞ
• Ɲ ɲ
• ɳ
• ꞑ
• ɱ

Similar Cyrillic letters:

• Ӈ ӈ
• Ң ң
• Ҥ ҥ

The ISO basic Latin alphabet
Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp	Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz
Letter N with diacritics
Ńń	Ǹǹ	Ňň	Ññ	Ṅṅ	Ņņ	Ṇṇ	Ṋṋ	Ṉṉ	N̈n̈	Ɲɲ	Ƞƞ	Ŋŋ	Ꞑꞑ	ᵰ	ᶇ	ɳ	ȵ
Related
History Palaeography Derivations Diacritics Punctuation Numerals Unicode List of letters ISO/IEC 646

External links

• Practical Orthography of African Languages