| Hiragana Image: | Japanese Hiragana kyokashotai N.svg |
| Katakana Image: | Japanese Katakana kyokashotai N.svg |
| Transliteration: | n, (m), (ng) |
| Hiragana Manyogana: | 无 |
| Katakana Manyogana: | 尓 |
| Unicode: | U+3093, U+30F3 |
| Flag1: | 5 |
| Flag2: | 1 |
| Spelling: | おしまいのン Oshimai no "n" |
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:
| Form | Rōmaji | Hiragana | Katakana |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal n (ん) | n | ん | ン |
| nn n̄ | んん んー | ンン ンー |
N is the only Katakana without a circled form in Unicode.
The kana ん and ン and the various sounds they represent are known by the names and .[1] One of the various meanings of the verb is to "make an upward brush-stroke" when writing,[2] 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',[2] 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, an outdated term used from the Edo period to after World War II[3] [4]). These sounds were classified as, and . Hatsuon, in particular, were classified as follows: pronounced as /[m]/ is the, pronounced as /[n]/ is the, and pronounced as /[ŋ]/ is the .[5] Another of Ōshima's descriptions even more explicitly related the terms sokuon and hatsuon to the four tones of Middle Chinese.[6]
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 (pronounced as //n, s//) compared to the "labial nasal" when followed by a labial consonant (pronounced as //p, b, m//). In both cases, the resulting nasal indicated (see onbin). After the 11th century, the "lingual" and "labial" realizations were no longer distinguished in writing.[7]
In the Ainu language, ン is interchangeable with the small katakana ㇴ as a final n.