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Williamd Holder "used" it in 1669 |
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==History== |
==History== |
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This letter was designed by [[Alexander Gill the Elder]] in 1619.<ref>The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language |
This letter was designed by [[Alexander Gill the Elder]] in 1619.<ref>David Crystal (2003). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language</ref> |
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[[William Holder]] uses the letter in ''Elements of speech: An essay of inquiry into the natural production of letters'' published in 1669, however, as he indicates in his errata that “there was intented 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”.<ref name="Albright1958">Robert W. Albright (1958). ''The International Phonetic Alphabet'': Its Backgrounds and Development, Indiana University. p. 11</ref> |
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It was later used in [[Benjamin Franklin]] [[Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet|phonetic alphabet]], with its current phonetic value. |
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==Appearance== |
==Appearance== |
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Revision as of 23:32, 14 November 2013
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.[1] William Holder uses the letter in Elements of speech: An essay of inquiry into the natural production of letters published in 1669, however, as he indicates in his errata that “there was intented 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”.[2] It was later used in Benjamin Franklin 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].
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
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| Janalif variant of Eng is represented as N with descender. An equivalent version is used in the Cyrillic alphabet. | |
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) 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).
In African languages such as Bemba, ng' (with an apostrophe) is widely used as a substitute in media where eng is hard to reproduce.
See also
Similar Latin letters:
Similar Cyrillic letters:
References
External links
- Practical Orthography of African Languages
- FileFormat.info – Fonts that support LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ENG (U+014A) and LATIN SMALL LETTER ENG (U+014B)