Eng (letter)
Encyclopedia
Eng or engma 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 1619. It was later used in Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet
, with its current phonetic value.
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.
Languages marked † no longer use eng, but formerly did.
(Latin-4) in order to write the Sami languages, at BD (uppercase) and BF (lowercase). In Unicode
, it is in the Latin Extended-A range and it is encoded as U+014A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ENG and U+014B LATIN SMALL LETTER ENG.
Similar Latin letters:
Similar Cyrillic letters:
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, used to represent a velar nasal
Velar nasal
The velar nasal is the sound of ng in English sing. It is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N....
(as in English singing) in the written form of some languages and in the International Phonetic Alphabet
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
.
History
This letter was designed by Alexander Gill the ElderAlexander Gill the elder
Alexander Gill the Elder , also spelled Gil, was an English scholar, spelling reformer, and high-master of St Paul's School, where his pupils included John Milton...
in 1619. It was later used in Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet
Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet
Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet was Benjamin Franklin's proposal for a spelling reform of the English language. It used many of the same letters, but changed some of them and what sounds they represented. It was one of the earliest proposed spelling reforms to the English...
, with its current phonetic value.
Appearance
Lowercase eng is derived from nN
N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...
with the addition of a hook to the right leg, somewhat like that of j
J
Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic...
. 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
Sami languages
Sami or Saami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sami people in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. Sami is frequently and erroneously believed to be a single language. Several names are used for the Sami...
that use it, the latter in African languages
African languages
There are over 2100 and by some counts over 3000 languages spoken natively in Africa in several major language families:*Afro-Asiatic spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel...
.
Turned g
' or turned g is a letter of the Latin alphabet, formed by rotating g 180°. It is used to transliterate the Georgian letter . itself is the Georgian letter "g" rotated. It represents a in some East Caucasian languages....
, or by substituting a Greek
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet is the script that has been used to write the Greek language since at least 730 BC . The alphabet in its classical and modern form consists of 24 letters ordered in sequence from alpha to omega...
eta
Eta (letter)
Eta ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet. Originally denoting a consonant /h/, its sound value in the classical Attic dialect of Ancient Greek was a long vowel , raised to in medieval Greek, a process known as itacism.In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 8...
(η) for it.
Technical transcription
- Americanist phonetic notationAmericanist phonetic notationAmericanist phonetic notation is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American anthropologists and language scientists for the phonetic and phonemic transcription of Native American and European languages...
(where it may also represent a uvular nasal) - Sometimes for the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languagesTranscription of Australian Aboriginal languagesPrior to the arrival of Europeans, Australian Aboriginal languages had been purely spoken languages, and had no writing system. The Latin alphabet of the colonizers was inevitably used for the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages, but the details of how the sounds were represented has...
- International Phonetic AlphabetInternational Phonetic AlphabetThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
- Uralic Phonetic AlphabetUralic Phonetic AlphabetThe Uralic Phonetic Alphabet or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages...
- Rheinische DokumentaRheinische DokumentaThe Rheinische Dokumenta is a phonetic writing system developed in the early 1980s by a working group of academics, linguists, local language experts, and local language speakers of the Rhineland....
, a phonetic alphabet for many West Central GermanWest Central GermanWest Central German belongs to the Central, High German dialect family in the German language. Its dialects are thoroughly Franconian including the following sub-families:* Central Franconian...
, the Low Rhenish, and few related languages
Vernacular orthographies
| Janalif variant of Eng is represented as N with descender Descender In typography, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font. The line that descenders reach down to is known as the beard line.... . |
Languages marked † no longer use eng, but formerly did.
- African languagesAfrican languagesThere are over 2100 and by some counts over 3000 languages spoken natively in Africa in several major language families:*Afro-Asiatic spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel...
- BariBari languageBari is the Nilotic language of the Karo people, spoken over large areas of Central Equatoria state in South Sudan, across the northwest corner of Uganda, and into the Democratic Republic of Congo....
- DinkaDinka languageThis article is about the language, for the ethnic group see Dinka.Dinka, or , is a Nilotic dialect cluster spoken by the Dinka people, the major ethnic group of South Sudan. There are five main varieties, Ngok, Rek, Agaar, Twic / Tuic East, and Bor, which are distinct enough to require separate...
- EweEwe languageEwe is a Niger–Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately six million people. Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe, spoken in southeastern Ghana, Togo, and parts of Benin. Other Gbe languages include Fon, Gen, Phla Phera, and Aja...
- FulaFula languageThe Fula or Fulani language is a language of West Africa. It is spoken as a first language by the and related groups from Senegambia and Guinea to Cameroon and Sudan...
- Ganda
- Manding languagesManding languagesThe Manding languages are a fairly mutually intelligible group of dialects or languages in West Africa, belonging to the Mande languages. Their best-known members are Bambara, the most widely spoken language in Mali; Mandinka, the main language of Gambia; Maninka or Malinké, a major language of...
- Songhay languagesSonghay languagesThe Songhay, Songhai, or Songai languages are a group of closely related languages/dialects centered on the middle stretches of the Niger River in the west African states of Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria. They have been widely used as a lingua franca in that region ever since the...
- WolofWolof languageWolof is a language spoken in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania, and is the native language of the Wolof people. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger–Congo language family...
- Bari
- American languagesIndigenous languages of the AmericasIndigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...
- O'odhamO'odham languageO'odham is an Uto-Aztecan language of southern Arizona and northern Sonora where the Tohono O'odham and Pima reside. As of the year 2000, there were estimated to be approximately 9750 speakers in the United States and Mexico combined, although there may be more due to underreporting...
- O'odham
- Australian Aboriginal languagesAustralian Aboriginal languagesThe Australian Aboriginal languages comprise several language families and isolates native to the Australian Aborigines of Australia and a few nearby islands, but by convention excluding the languages of Tasmania and the Torres Strait Islanders...
- BandjalangBandjalang languageBundjalung is an Australian Indigenous language of New South Wales.Bundjalung consists of a number of dialects, including Yugumbir, Nganduwal, Minjangbal, Njangbal, Biriin, Baryulgil, Waalubal, Dinggabal, Wiyabal, Gidabal, Galibal, and Wudjeebal.-Vowels:...
- Yolngu
- Bandjalang
- Languages of ChinaLanguages of ChinaChina's many different ethnic groups speak many different languages, collectively called Zhōngguó Yǔwén , literally, "speech and writing of China", which span eight primary language families. Most of them are dissimilar morphologically and phonetically. Even within each family, most are mutually...
- Zhuang† (replaced by the digraph ng in 1986)
- Sami languagesSami languagesSami or Saami is a general name for a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sami people in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden and extreme northwestern Russia, in Northern Europe. Sami is frequently and erroneously believed to be a single language. Several names are used for the Sami...
- Inari SamiInari SamiInari Sámi is a Uralic, Sami language spoken by the Inari Sami of Finland. It has approximately 300 speakers, the majority of whom are middle-aged or older and live in the municipality of Inari. According to the Sami Parliament of Finland 269 persons used Inari Sami as their first language. It is...
- Lule SamiLule SamiLule Sami is a Uralic, Sami language spoken in Lule Lappmark, i.e., around Luleå, Sweden and in the northern parts of Nordland county in Norway, especially Tysfjord municipality, where Lule Sami is an official language...
- Northern SamiNorthern SamiNorthern or North Sami is the most widely spoken of all Sami languages. The speaking area of Northern Sami covers the northern parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland...
- Skolt SamiSkolt SamiSkolt Sami is a Uralic, Sami language spoken by approximately 400 speakers in Finland, mainly in Sevettijärvi, and approximately 20–30 speakers of the Njuõˊttjäuˊrr dialect in an area surrounding Lake Lovozero in Russia. Skolt Sami used to also be spoken on the Neiden area of Norway,...
- Inari Sami
- Turkic languagesTurkic languagesThe Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
during Latinisation (USSR)Latinisation (USSR)In the USSR, latinisation was the name of the campaign during the 1920s-1930s which aimed to replace traditional writing systems for numerous languages with the Latin alphabet and to create for languages had no writing. Almost all Turkic, Iranian, Uralic and several other languages were romanized,...
used Ꞑ ꞑ, sometimes considered a variant of Eng.
Computer encoding
Eng is present in ISO 8859-4ISO/IEC 8859-4
ISO/IEC 8859-4:1998, Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 4: Latin alphabet No. 4, is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1988. It is informally referred to as Latin-4 or North European. It...
(Latin-4) in order to write the Sami languages, at BD (uppercase) and BF (lowercase). In Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
, it is in the Latin Extended-A range and it is encoded as U+014A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ENG and U+014B LATIN SMALL LETTER ENG.
See also
- Ng (digraph)
- Nh (digraph)Nh (digraph)Nh is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, a combination of N and H. Together with lh and the interpunct, it was a typical feature of Old Occitan, the language used by medieval troubadours.-African languages:...
Similar Latin letters:
Similar Cyrillic letters: