N (kana)

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Hiragana	Katakana
Transliteration:	n
Hiragana Man'yōgana:	无
Katakana Man'yōgana:	尓
Unicode:
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 standard Japanese word (but it can however begin a foreign loan word; for example, "Ngorongoro" is transcribed as "ンゴロンゴロ"). In some dialects of Japanese, ん may begin a contraction of a phrase, but such uses are generally for informal conversation only.

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. But like every other kana, it represents an entire mora - and 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:

• [ŋ] (before /k/ or /ɡ/)
• [m] (before /b/, /p/ or /m/)
• [n] (before /d/, /n/, or /t/)
• [ũ] (between /a/ and /o/ or before /s/)
• [ĩ] (between /i/ and /o/)
• [ɴ] (at the end of an utterance)

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

[edit] Stroke order

[edit] References

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