Ng (Arabic letter)

Ngāf or Ṅāf (ݣ‎ or ڭ‎) is an additional letter of the Arabic script, derived from kāf (ك ک‎) with the addition of three dots above the letter. The letter was used in Ottoman Turkish to represent a velar /ŋ/ and is still used for /ŋ/ when writing Turkic languages.

Usage

In Ottoman Turkish, it represented the velar /ŋ/. An example is the word däŋiz (دڭز, 'sea'). The letter is used or has been used to write /ŋ/ in:

• Chagatai
• Kazakh
• Kyrgyz
• Azerbaijani
• Uyghur

It is also used in Moroccan Arabic for /ɡ/.

The Xiao'erjing script variant ݣ‎ is used to spell /ŋ/ in Sinitic languages such as Mandarin (especially the Lanyin, Zhongyuan and Northeastern dialects) and the Dungan language.

Other characters used to represent /ŋ/

Southeast Asian nga

This letter, derived from ghayn (غ‎), is used to represent /ŋ/ in:

• the Jawi script, for Acehnese Banjarese Kerinci Maguindanaon Malay Minangkabau Tausūg Ternate
• the Pegon script, for Javanese Sundanese
• Arabic Afrikaans, for Afrikaans historically, called ngīn ([ŋiːn])

Wolof ngōn

This letter is also derived from ghayn. Called ngōn (Wolof pronunciation: [ŋɔːn]), it is used in the Wolofal alphabet to represent /ŋ/ in the Wolof language. Two variants of kāf were also used: ڭ‎ as in Turkic, and ݤ‎‎ below.

Sindhi ngāf

Derived from the Perso-Arabic gāf (گ) and called ngāf [ŋäːf], is used in Sindhi for /ŋ/ when written in the Arabic script.

Tamil nga

This letter is also derived from ghayn, with three dots inside the descender, to represent /ŋ/ in the Arwi script used for Tamil.

See also

• Kāf
• Ghayn
• Gaf
• Ayin
• Gueh, used in Sindhi and Saraiki