N (kana)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The hiragana ん.	The katakana ン.

	kana - gojūon
n	wa	ra	ya	ma	ha	na	ta	sa	ka	a
tsu	wi	ri		mi	hi	ni	chi	shi	ki	i
゛		ru	yu	mu	fu	nu	tsu	su	ku	u
ー	we	re		me	he	ne	te	se	ke	e
	wo	ro	yo	mo	ho	no	to	so	ko	o

ん, in hiragana, or ン in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, which each represent one mora. It is the only kana sound ending with a consonant.

This kana is unique in several aspects; it can never begin a word and is followed by an apostrophe in transliteration whenever it precedes a vowel or a y- kana, so as to prevent confusion with other kana. But like every other kana, it represents an entire mora - and so its pronunciation is, in practice, as close to 'nn' as 'n'. Also, when preceding any kana that begins with an "M," "B," or "P," sound, this kana can become an "M" sound.