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The 'velar nasal' is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N.
As a phoneme, the velar nasal does not occur in many of the indigenous languages of the Americas, nor in a large number of European or Middle Eastern languages. While almost all languages have and , only about half have a velar nasal. As with the voiced velar plosive, the relative rarity of the velar nasal is undoubtedly due to the fact that the small oral cavity used to produce velar consonants makes it more difficult for voicing to be sustained. It also makes it much more difficult to allow air to escape through the nose as is required for a nasal consonant.
In many languages that do not have the velar nasal as a phoneme, it occurs as an allophone of before velar consonants.

Contents

Features

Varieties of [ŋ]

Occurrence

See also

Features

Features of the velar nasal:

★ Its manner of articulation is stop, which means it is produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract.

★ Its place of articulation is velar which means it is articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the velum).

★ Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.

★ It is a nasal consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the nose.

★ It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.

★ The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.
The IPA symbol is a lowercase letter ''n'' with a leftward tail protruding from the bottom of the right stem of the letter. Compare n and . Both the symbol and the sound are commonly called as "eng" or "engma" and sometimes in reference to Greek, "angma". The symbol should not be confused with , the symbol for the retroflex nasal, which has a ''rightward''-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the ''right stem'' or with , the symbol for the palatal nasal, which has a ''leftward''-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the ''left stem''.

Varieties of [ŋ]

IPA	Description
	plain ŋ
	voiceless ŋ
	syllabic ŋ
	breathy voiced ŋ
	creaky voiced ŋ
	labialized ŋ

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Aleut	Dali dialect	''chaa'ng'''		'five'
Bai		?		'fish'
Dutch		'ң'ыроқ		'two'
Cantonese		梗/gang2		'flower stem'	See Standard Cantonese
Dinka		'''ŋ'a''		'who'
Dutch		''a'ng'st''		'fear'	See Dutch phonology
English		''si'ng'''		'sing'	Restricted to the syllable coda. See English phonology
Fijian		'''g'one''		'child'
Finnish		''la'ng'an''		'of the thread'	See Finnish phonology
French		''parki'ng'''		'parking lot'	See French phonology
Galician		''u'nh'a''		'year'
German		''la'ng'''		'long'	See German phonology
Greek		ά'γ'χος		'stress'	See Modern Greek phonology
Hindi		रङ्ग		'color'
Hungarian		''i'n'g''		'shirt'	See Hungarian phonology
Icelandic		''gö'n'g''		?	See Icelandic phonology
Indonesian		''ba'ng'un''		'this'
Irish		''cea'nn' carrach''		'a scabbed one'	See Irish phonology
Italian		''a'n'che''		'also'	See Italian phonology
Itelmen		қни'ң'		'one'
Japanese	Standard	南極/''na'n'kyoku''		'the South Pole'	See Japanese phonology
	Eastern dialects	鍵/''ka'g'i''		'key'
Ket		'''i'n'i'''		'this'
Korean		방/''ba'ng'''		'room'
Mandarin		北京/''Běij'ī'ng''		'Beijing'	See Standard Mandarin
Nivkh		'ң'амг		'seven'
Norwegian		''ga'ng'''		'hallway'	See Norwegian phonology
Polish		''ba'n'k''		'bank'	See Polish phonology
Occitan	Provençal	''vi'n'''		'wine'
Seri		''co'm'cáac''		'Seri people'
Spanish		''domi'n'go''		'Sunday'	See Spanish phonology
Swahili		'''ng''ombe''	]]	'cow'
Swedish		''ba'n'k''		'bank'	See Swedish phonology

See also

★ List of phonetics topics