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[[Image:Eng.png|thumb|right|The letter eng, with its two variant capital forms.]] |
[[Image:Eng.png|thumb|right|The letter eng, with its two variant capital forms.]] |
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'''Eng''' or '''engma''' ([[majuscule]]: '''Ŋ''', [[Lower case|minuscule]]: '''ŋ''') is a letter of the [[Latin alphabet]], used to represent a [[velar nasal]] (as in English ''si'''ng'''i'''ng''''') in the written form of some languages and in the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]]. |
'''Eng''' or '''engma''' ([[majuscule]]: '''Ŋ''', [[Lower case|minuscule]]: '''ŋ''') is a letter of the [[Latin alphabet]], used to represent a [[velar nasal]] (as in English ''si'''ng'''i'''ng''''') in the written form of some languages and in the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]]. |
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==History== |
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This letter was designed by Alexander Gill the Elder in 1619<ref>The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, David Crystal</ref>. It was later used in [[Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet]], with its current phonetic value. |
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==Appearance== |
==Appearance== |
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Revision as of 00:33, 8 January 2010
Eng or engma (majuscule: Ŋ, minuscule: 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[1]. 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.
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
Languages marked † no longer use eng, but formerly did.
- African languages
- American languages
- Australian Aboriginal languages
- Languages of China
- Zhuang† (replaced by the digraph ng in 1986)
- Sami languages
- Turkic languages during Latinisation (USSR).
Computer encoding
Eng is present in ISO 8859-4 (Latin-4) in order to write the Sami languages, at BD (uppercase) and BF (lowercase). In Unicode, it is encoded as U+014A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ENG and U+014B LATIN SMALL LETTER ENG.
See also
Similar Latin letters:
Similar Cyrillic letters:
External links
- ^ The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, David Crystal