Voiced velar nasal

"Velar nasal" and "Agma" redirect here. For the voiceless consonant, see Voiceless velar nasal. For other uses, see Agma (disambiguation).
Voiced velar nasal
ŋ
IPA Number119
Audio sample
Encoding
Entity (decimal)ŋ
Unicode (hex)U+014B
X-SAMPAN
Braille⠫ (braille pattern dots-1246)

The voiced velar nasal, also known as eng, engma, or agma (from Greek ἆγμα âgma 'fragment'), is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ng in English sing as well as n before velar consonants as in English and ink. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ŋ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N. The IPA symbol ⟨ŋ⟩ is similar to ⟨ɳ⟩, the symbol for the retroflex nasal, which has a rightward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem, and to ⟨ɲ⟩, the symbol for the palatal nasal, which has a leftward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the left stem.

While almost all languages have /m/ and /n/ as phonemes, /ŋ/ is rarer.[1] Half of the 469 languages surveyed in Anderson (2008) had a velar nasal phoneme; as a further curiosity, many of them limit its occurrence to the syllable coda. The velar nasal does not occur in many of the languages of the Americas, the Middle East, or the Caucasus, but it is extremely common among Australian Aboriginal languages, languages of Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asian and Southeast Asian languages, and Polynesian languages. In many languages that do not have the velar nasal as a phoneme, such as the Romance languages, it occurs as an allophone of /n/ before velar consonants. This kind of assimilation can even be found in languages with phonemic voiced velar nasals, such as English. An example of this phenomenon is the word income; its underlying representation, /ˈɪnˌkʌm/, can be realized as either [ˈɪnˌkʌm] or [ˈɪŋˌkʌm].

An example of a language that lacks a phonemic or allophonic velar nasal is Russian, in which /n/ is pronounced as laminal denti-alveolar [n̪] even before velar consonants.[2]

Some languages have the pre-velar nasal,[3] which is articulated slightly more front compared with the place of articulation of the prototypical velar nasal, though not as front as the prototypical palatal nasal - see that article for more information.

Conversely, some languages have the post-velar nasal,[4] which is articulated slightly behind the place of articulation of a prototypical velar nasal, though not as back as the prototypical uvular nasal.

  1. ^ Ladefoged (2005), p. 164. The oral counterparts /p, t, k/ are found together in almost all languages
  2. ^ Jones & Ward (1969), p. 160.
  3. ^ Instead of "pre-velar", it can be called "advanced velar", "fronted velar", "front-velar", "palato-velar", "post-palatal", "retracted palatal" or "backed palatal".
  4. ^ Instead of "post-velar", it can be called "retracted velar", "backed velar", "pre-uvular", "advanced uvular" or "fronted uvular".