Ng (Arabic letter)

Ng or Ngaf (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