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Vernacular orthographies: Tonga (Ten'edn) uses ŋ not Tongo (Chitonga)
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Vernacular orthographies: English has never used eng in its normal orthography
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*[[Turkic languages]] during [[Latinisation (USSR)|Latinisation in the 1930s]] used [[Ꞑ|Ꞑ ꞑ]], sometimes considered a variant of eng.
*[[Turkic languages]] during [[Latinisation (USSR)|Latinisation in the 1930s]] used [[Ꞑ|Ꞑ ꞑ]], sometimes considered a variant of eng.
*[[Mapuche language]] (Wirizüŋun script)
*[[Mapuche language]] (Wirizüŋun script)
*[[Germanic languages]]
**[[English language|English]]†
*[[Kalam languages]]
*[[Kalam languages]]
**[[Kalam language]]<ref name="Majnep">{{cite book |last1=Majnep |first1=Ian Saem |last2=Bulmer |first2=Ralph |authorlink2=Ralph Bulmer |others=illustrations by Christopher Healey |pages=17-18 |title=Birds of my Kalam Country |trans-title=Mn̄mon Yad Kalam Yakt |date=1977 |publisher=Aukland University Press |location=New Zealand |isbn=9780196479538 |language=English |oclc=251862814}}</ref>
**[[Kalam language]]<ref name="Majnep">{{cite book |last1=Majnep |first1=Ian Saem |last2=Bulmer |first2=Ralph |authorlink2=Ralph Bulmer |others=illustrations by Christopher Healey |pages=17-18 |title=Birds of my Kalam Country |trans-title=Mn̄mon Yad Kalam Yakt |date=1977 |publisher=Aukland University Press |location=New Zealand |isbn=9780196479538 |language=English |oclc=251862814}}</ref>

Revision as of 16:29, 24 January 2020

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.

In Washo, lower-case ⟨ŋ⟩ represents a typical [ŋ] sound, while upper-case ⟨Ŋ⟩ represents a voiceless [ŋ̊] sound. This convention comes from Americanist phonetic notation.

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 g. Alexander Gill the Elder uses an uppercase G with a hooked tail and a lowercase n with the hooked tail of a script g ⟨ŋ⟩ for the same sound in Logonomia Anglica 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, 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”.[2] 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,[3] such as in Shona from 1931–1955, and several in west and central Africa currently.

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 (encoded in Unicode as the Latin letter n with long leg: Ƞ ƞ).

Usage

Technical transcription

Vernacular orthographies

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.

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

  1. ^ David Crystal (2003). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language
  2. ^ Robert W. Albright (1958). The International Phonetic Alphabet: Its Backgrounds and Development, Indiana University. p. 11
  3. ^ "Essay Archives and Poetry". Retrieved 10 June 2004.
  4. ^ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
  5. ^ Everson, Michael; Dicklberger, Alois; Pentzlin, Karl; Wandl-Vogt, Eveline (2011-06-02). "L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF).
  6. ^ Majnep, Ian Saem; Bulmer, Ralph (1977). Birds of my Kalam Country [Mn̄mon Yad Kalam Yakt]. illustrations by Christopher Healey. New Zealand: Aukland University Press. pp. 17–18. ISBN 9780196479538. OCLC 251862814.
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