Talk:Eng (letter)

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Contents

[edit] Invented by Benjamin Franklin?

According to David Crystal (in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language), eng has been designed by Alexander Gill the Elder in 1619.

Meanwhile, the page on Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet implies he invented it. I'm not sure which is right, but there seems to be good online evidence that BF did at least use it in his designed alphabet, with its current IPA meaning, so it seems it was not invented for IPA use. --Rschmertz 04:26, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested Moves: Eng (letter) to Eng

[edit] Votes

  • Oppose Eng should be a DAB page. 132.205.45.110
    • Comment You don't think it would be better to have a dab page at Eng (disambiguation), with Eng being about the letter? I think putting a dab page at Eng would only be appropriate if there were multiple things actually called "eng", not just sometimes abbreviated to "eng". --Ptcamn 03:25, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
  • There;s at least one; see Chang and Eng. Septentrionalis 04:48, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Not moved, for now. —Nightstallion (?) 12:07, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] aboriginal languages map

it is used quite a bit in this 1940 aboriginal map --Astrokey44 06:16, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merging with "Velar nasal"?

Oppose:

  • Not clear that this makes sense. The velar nasal sound is represented by other means also (ng, sometimes nh). What is done with other Latin letters and the names for sounds they represent? --A12n (talk) 05:09, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Oppose: one is a letter, the other is a sound. FilipeS (talk) 17:15, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Eng not in Latin alphabet box

Why is the letter eng not included among the list of "Letter N with diacritics" such as one sees on Ɲ and Ñ? Why does the Latin alphabet box in this article not have that list? (Not sure how to edit the box, which is another question.)--A12n (talk) 05:12, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

It's not a combination of a letter with a diacritic, but a character in its own right. -- Prince Kassad (talk) 12:29, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
The article says "Lowercase eng is derived from n with the addition of a hook to the right leg, ..." which sounds a lot like the how one would describe some of the other "n" variant forms in the abovementioned box. Whether one calls a modification of the letter form a "diacritic" (see for example Hook (diacritic)) or something else seems to be a valid question. But either way, doesn't it seem like ŋ logically belongs in the same category as ɲ, ƞ, etc.? Maybe they (including ŋ)should be called something else rather than "N with diacritics" (which applies unambiguously to ñ, ṅ, etc.)? The eng may have a longer history(?) and seems to have wider use than many other extended Latin characters, but it's still part of the same group and users should be able to easily find it with the others.--A12n (talk) 07:56, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
The eng is a modified n, no question about that. As for the "derived from n with the addition of a hook to the right leg" bit, I don't think that should be taken too literally. It's more a graphic description of the form of the character. Notice the difference between the "trunk" of the ŋ, and the hooks used by Vietnamese, in the Hook (diacritic) page. FilipeS (talk) 17:17, 7 January 2008 (UTC)