N (kana)

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.

n
hiragana katakana
transliteration	n, (m),(ng)
hiragana origin	无
katakana origin	尓
spelling kana	おしまいのン Oshimai no "n"
unicode	U+3093, U+30F3
braille

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). In the Ainu language, ン is interchangeable with the small katakana ㇴ as a final n.

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, 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] (before n, t, d, r, ts, z, ch and j )
• [m] (before m, p and b )
• [ŋ] (before k and g)
• [ɴ] (at the end of utterances)
• [ũ͍] (before vowels, palatal approximants (y), consonants h, f, s, sh and w)
• [ĩ] (after the vowel i if another vowel, palatal approximant or consonant f, s, sh, h or w follows.)

Form	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal n (ん)	n	ん	ン
	nn nh	んん んー	ンン ンー

Other additional forms
Form (nw-) Rōmaji Hiragana Katakana nwa んわ ンワ Nwankwo Kanu (ンワンクウォ・カヌ Nwankuwo Kanu) nwi んうぃ/んゐ ンウィ/ンヰ Nwisd (ンウィスド Nwisudo) nwe んうぇ/んゑ ンウェ/ンヱ Nwenaing (ンウェナイング Nwenaingu) nwo んうぉ/んを ンウォ/ンヲ Nwoya District (ンウォヤ・ディストリクト Nwoya Disutorikuto)

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing ん

Stroke order in writing ン

Stroke order in writing ん

Stroke order in writing ン

Other communicative representations

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
おしまいのン Oshimai no "N"	▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-356 Japanese Braille

• Full Braille representation

ん / ン in Japanese Braille:

• Computer encodings

Character information

Preview	ん		ン		ﾝ		𛅧
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER N		KATAKANA LETTER N		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER N		KATAKANA LETTER SMALL N
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	12435	U+3093	12531	U+30F3	65437	U+FF9D	110951	U+1B167
UTF-8	227 130 147	E3 82 93	227 131 179	E3 83 B3	239 190 157	EF BE 9D	240 155 133 167	F0 9B 85 A7
UTF-16	12435	3093	12531	30F3	65437	FF9D	55340 56679	D82C DD67
Numeric character reference	ん	ん	ン	ン	ﾝ	ﾝ	𛅧	𛅧
Shift JIS[1]	130 241	82 F1	131 147	83 93	221	DD
EUC-JP[2]	164 243	A4 F3	165 243	A5 F3	142 221	8E DD
GB 18030[3]	164 243	A4 F3	165 243	A5 F3	132 49 155 55	84 31 9B 37	147 54 134 53	93 36 86 35
EUC-KR[4] / UHC[5]	170 243	AA F3	171 243	AB F3
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[6]	198 247	C6 F7	199 173	C7 AD
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[7]	199 122	C7 7A	199 239	C7 EF

References

• Oguri, Saori; László, Tony (2005). Darling no atamannaka. Tokyo: Media Factory. ISBN 4-8401-1226-6.

1. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
2. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
3. Standardization Administration of China (SAC) (2005-11-18). GB 18030-2005: Information Technology—Chinese coded character set.
4. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
5. Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
6. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
7. van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.