ん, in hiragana or ン in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one mora. ん is the only kana that does not end in a vowel sound (although in certain cases the vowel ending of kana, such as す, is unpronounced). The kana for mu, む/ム, was originally used for the n sound as well, while ん was originally a hentaigana used for both n and mu. In the 1900 Japanese script reforms, hentaigana were officially declared obsolete and ん was officially declared a kana to represent the n sound.
In addition to being the only kana not ending with a vowel sound, it is also the only kana that does not begin any words in standard Japanese (other than foreign loan words such as "Ngorongoro", which is transcribed as ンゴロンゴロ) (see Shiritori). Some regional dialects of Japanese feature words beginning with ん, as do the Ryukyuan languages (which are usually written in the Japanese writing system), in which words starting with ン are common, such as the Okinawan word for miso, nnsu (transcribed as ンース).
The kana is followed by an apostrophe in some systems of transliteration whenever it precedes a vowel or a y- kana, so as to prevent confusion with other kana. However, like every other kana besides yōon, it represents an entire mora, so its pronunciation is, in practice, as close to "nn" as "n". The pronunciation can also change depending on what sounds surround it. These are a few of the ways it can change:
N is the only Katakana without a circled form in Unicode.
Names
The kana ん and ン and the various sounds they represent are known by the names hatsuon (撥音) and haneru-on (撥ねる音).[9] One of the various meanings of the verb haneru (撥ねる) is to "make an upward brush-stroke" when writing,[10] which is a gesture that is involved in writing the kana ん and ン. Another meaning is rather specific, to 'pronounce "n" as a syllabic consonant',[10] in other words, to make the sounds represented by the kana ん and ン. It is not clear whether the calligraphic gesture involved in writing the kana or some phonetic gesture involved in producing the sounds gives the names hatsuon and haneru-on. English-language literature favors the descriptive name moraic nasal for the sounds.
Historically, the name hatsuon was not used just for the Japanese moraic nasal, but also for ending nasals in Middle Chinese. The Meiji-era linguist Ōshima Masatake used the terms sokuon ("plosive") and hatsuon ("nasal") to describe ending consonants in Chinese (which he called Shinago (支那語), an outdated term used from the Edo period to after World War II[11][12]). These sounds were classified as "labial" (唇內, shinnai), "lingual" (舌內, zetsunai) and "guttural" (喉內, kōnai). Hatsuon, in particular, were classified as follows: [m] is the "labial nasal" (唇內撥音), [n] is the "lingual nasal" (舌內撥音), and [ŋ] is the "guttural nasal" (喉內撥音).[13] Another of Ōshima's descriptions even more explicitly related the terms sokuon and hatsuon to the four tones of Middle Chinese.[14]
In earlier stages of Japanese, different realizations of the moraic nasal were actually indicated in writing. For example, during the Heian period (Early Middle Japanese), the "lingual nasal" was spelt differently when followed by a lingual consonant (/n,s/) compared to the "labial nasal" when followed by a labial consonant (/p,b,m/). In both cases, the resulting nasal indicated hatsuonbin (撥音便) (see onbin). After the 11th century, the "lingual" and "labial" realizations were no longer distinguished in writing.[15]
Use in the Ainu language
In the Ainu language, ン is interchangeable with the small katakana ㇴ as a final n.
Notes
^The syllable-final nasal in Japanese was traditionally said to be realized as a uvular nasal when utterance-final, but empirical studies have disputed this claim.[1]
^Ōshima, Masatake (July 1897). "撥音と促音". 音韻漫錄 (in Japanese). pp. 45–47.
^Ōshima, Masatake (5 February 1899). "古今入聲の比較". 東京獨立雜誌 (in Japanese) (21): 13.
^Yamaguchi, Akiho; 秋山, 守英 (1 March 2001). 日本語文法大辞典. Meiji Shoin.
Look up ん or ン in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Sources
Maekawa, Kikuo (2023), "Production of the utterance-final moraic nasal in Japanese: A real-time MRI study", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 53 (1): 189–212, doi:10.1017/S0025100321000050
Further reading
Oguri, Saori; László, Tony (2005). Darling no atamannaka. Tokyo: Media Factory. ISBN4-8401-1226-6.
