Velar nasal

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IPA – number	119
IPA – text	ŋ
IPA – image
Entity	ŋ
X-SAMPA	`N`
Kirshenbaum	`N`
Sound sample (help·info)

The velar nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ŋ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N.

As a phoneme, the velar nasal does not occur in many of the indigenous languages of the Americas, nor in a large number of European or Middle Eastern languages. While almost all languages have /m/ and /n/, only about half have a velar nasal^[1]. As with the voiced velar plosive, the relative rarity of the velar nasal is undoubtedly due to the fact that the small oral cavity used to produce velar consonants makes it more difficult for voicing to be sustained. It also makes it much more difficult to allow air to escape through the nose as is required for a nasal consonant.

In many languages that do not have the velar nasal as a phoneme, it occurs as an allophone of /n/ before velar consonants.

1 Features
2 Varieties of [ŋ]
3 Occurrence
4 See also
5 References
6 Bibliography

Features

Features of the velar nasal:

Its manner of articulation is stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.
Its place of articulation is velar which means it is articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the velum).
Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
It is a nasal consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the nose.
It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

The IPA symbol is a lowercase letter n with a leftward tail protruding from the bottom of the right stem of the letter. Compare n and ŋ. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly called as "eng" or "engma" and sometimes in reference to Greek, "angma". The symbol ŋ should not be confused with ɳ, the symbol for the retroflex nasal, which has a rightward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem or with ɲ, the symbol for the palatal nasal, which has a leftward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the left stem.

Varieties of [ŋ]

IPA	Description
ŋ	plain ŋ
ŋ̊	voiceless ŋ
ŋ̍	syllabic ŋ
ŋ̈	breathy voiced ŋ
ŋ̃	creaky voiced ŋ
ŋʷ	labialized ŋ

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Aleut		chaang	[tʃɑːŋ]	'five'
Bai	Dali dialect	?	[ŋv˩˧]	'fish'
Chinese	Cantonese	昂/ngong4	[ŋɔːŋ˩]	'raise'	See Standard Cantonese
Chinese	Mandarin	北京/Běijīng	[peɪ˨˩ tɕiŋ˥˥]	'Beijing'	See Standard Mandarin
Catalan^[2]		sang	[saŋ]	'blood'	See Catalan phonology
Chukchi		ңыроқ	[ŋəɹoq]	'two'
Czech		tank	[taŋk]	'tank'	See Czech phonology
Dinka		ŋa	[ŋa]	'who'
Dutch^[3]		angst	[ɑŋst]	'fear'	See Dutch phonology
English		sing	[sɪŋ]	'sing'	Restricted to the syllable coda. See English phonology
Fijian		gone	[ˈŋone]	'child'
Filipino		ngayon	[ˈŋajon]	'now, today'
Finnish		langan	[lɑŋːɑn]	'of the thread'	See Finnish phonology
French^[4]		parking	[paʀkiŋ]	'parking lot'	See French phonology
Galician		unha	[ˈuŋa]	'one', 'a' (feminine)
German		lang	[laŋ]	'long'	See German phonology
Greek		αποτυγχάνω	[aˌpo̞tiŋˈxano̞]	'I fail (to fail)'	See Modern Greek phonology
Hebrew		בנק	[baŋk]	'bank'	Allophone of /n/ before velar consonants. See Hebrew phonology
Hindi		रङ्ग	[rəŋg]	'color'	See Hindi-Urdu phonology
Hungarian		ing	[iŋg]	'shirt'	See Hungarian phonology
Icelandic		göng	[ˈkøyŋk]	?	See Icelandic phonology
Indonesian		bangun	[baŋun]	'wake up'
Irish		ceann carrach	[caŋ ˈkaɾˠəx]	'a scabbed one'	See Irish phonology
Italian^[5]		anche	[ˈaŋke]	'also'	See Italian phonology
Itelmen		қниң	[qniŋ]	'one'
Japanese	Standard	南極/nankyoku	[naŋkʲokɯ]	'the South Pole'	See Japanese phonology
Japanese	Eastern dialects^[6]	鍵/kagi	[kaŋi]	'key'	See Japanese phonology
Ket		аяң	[ajaŋ]	'to damn'
Korean		방/bang	[paŋ]	'room'	See Korean phonology
Macedonian		aнглиски	[ˈaŋgliski]	'English'	Occurs occasionally as an allophone of /n/ before /k/ and /g/. See Macedonian phonology
Nivkh		ңамг	[ŋamg]	'seven'
Norwegian		gang	[gɑŋ]	'hallway'	See Norwegian phonology
Polish^[7]		bank	[baŋk]	'bank'	See Polish phonology
Occitan	Provençal	vin	[viŋ]	'wine'
Russian		функция	[ˈfuŋkt͡sɨjə]	'function'	Occurs only irregularly before /k/ or /g/. See Russian phonology
Seri		comcáac	[koŋˈkaak]	'Seri people'
Shona		'nanga	[ŋaŋga]	'witch-doctor'
Slovene		tank	[taŋk]	'tank'
Spanish^[8]		domingo	[d̪o̞ˈmĩŋgo̞]	'Sunday'	See Spanish phonology
Swahili		ng'ombe	[ŋɔmbɛ]	'cow'
Swedish		bank	[baŋkʰ]	'bank'	See Swedish phonology
Thai		งาน	[ŋaːn]	'work/job'
Vietnamese		ưng	[ɯŋ]	'to accept'	See Vietnamese phonology

References

^ Anderson, Gregory D. S.. 2008. The Velar Nasal. In: Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, chapter 9. Available online at http://wals.info/feature/9 Accessed on 2008-04-30.
^ Carbonell & Llisterri (1992:53)
^ Gussenhoven (1992:45)
^ Wells (1989:44)
^ Rogers & d'Arcangeli (2004:118)
^ Okada (1991:95)
^ Jassem (2003:103)
^ Martínez-Celdrán et al (2003:258)

Bibliography

Carbonell, Joan F. & Joaquim Llisterri (1992), "Catalan", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (1-2): 53-56
Gussenhoven, Carlos (1992), "Dutch", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (2): 45-47
Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (1): 103-107
Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Ana Ma. Fernández-Planas & Josefina Carrera-Sabaté (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255-259
Okada, Hideo (1991), "Phonetic Representation:Japanese", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 21 (2): 94-97
Rogers, Derek & Luciana d'Arcangeli (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 117-121
Wells, J.C. (1989), "Computer-Coded Phonemic Notation of Individual Languages of the European Community", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 19 (1): 31-54

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This table contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help]
Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant. Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged to be impossible.