Ny is a digraph in a number of languages such as
Catalan,
Ganda,
Filipino/Tagalog,
Hungarian,
Swahili and
Malay. In most of these languages, including all of the ones named above, it denotes the
palatal nasal (). To represent the palatal nasal in other languages, the letter nj is used, such as in Albanian and the countries using Gaj's Latin alphabet and the countries that make up the former Yugoslavia.
It has had widespread use for languages of
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, M ...
, though in some countries, the IPA letter ''
ɲ'' is now used.
It is sometimes used in modern
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
where ''ñ'' cannot be used, such as in earlier computer programming or
Internet domain name
A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...
s.
[ FAQ about ].es
.es (espana) is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Spain. It is administered by the Network Information Centre of Spain.
Registrations are permitted at the second level or at the third level beneath various generic second level categ ...
domain names: . ''N'' and ''ny'' are mentioned as substitutes for ''ñ''.
Aragonese
The writing of the palatal nasal in
Aragonese has been a matter of debate since the first orthographic codification of the language (''grafía de Uesca'') in 1987 by the ''
Consello d'a Fabla Aragonesa'' at a convention in
Huesca
Huesca (; an, Uesca) is a city in north-eastern Spain, within the autonomous community of Aragon. It is also the capital of the Spanish province of the same name and of the comarca of Hoya de Huesca. In 2009 it had a population of 52,059, almo ...
. Medieval Aragonese had used several different digraphs, but the two most common spellings used were ''ñ'' (as in Spanish) or ''ny'' (as in Catalan). ''Ñ'' was the one chosen and has been used in almost all texts of the last decades, but the subject remained controversial, and some writers continued to promote the use of the digraph ''ny''. The use of ''ny'' was also proposed in an alternative
Aragonese orthography, the ''grafía SLA'' devised in 2004 by the ''Sociedat de Lingüistica Aragonesa'' in 2004. According to the 2010 ''Orthographic Proposal'' of the
Academia de l'Aragonés, created in 2006, the palatal nasal phoneme should be written as ''ny''.
[Estudio de Filolochía Aragonesa]
Propuesta Ortografica de l'Academia de l'Aragonés
Edicions Dichitals de l'Academia de l'Aragonés, Zaragoza, 2010.
Catalan
In
Catalan, ''ny'' is not considered a single letter but a consonantal digraph (''n'' followed by ''y'') to represent . The letter ''y'', in Catalan, is used only to form ''ny'' and has no other purpose.
It is found in any position in a word: at the beginning (''nyap'' "rubbish", ''nyaufar'' "to dent"), in intervocalic position (''Catalunya'' "Catalonia"; ''canya'' "reed", "steem") and at the end of a word (''any'' "year", ''estany'' "lagoon", ''seny'' "sense").
Hungarian
''Ny'' is the twenty-third letter of the
Hungarian alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
. Its name is ''eny'' (), and it represents the palatal nasal (). Even mere sequences of ''n'' and ''y'' that represent different sounds are considered instances of this letter; this holds true in
acronym
An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...
s as well.
Below are examples of Hungarian words that use the letter ''ny'' along with their English translations:
*anya = ''mother''
*enyém = ''mine''
*annyi = ''so much''
*anyós = ''mother-in-law''
*esernyő = ''umbrella''
*zsivány = ''knave''
Malay
In
Malaysian
Malaysian may refer to:
* Something from or related to Malaysia, a country in Southeast Asia
* Malaysian Malay, a dialect of Malay language spoken mainly in Malaysia
* Malaysian people, people who are identified with the country of Malaysia regard ...
and
Indonesian Malay, ''ny'' represents the
palatal nasal ; for example,
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
is called ''Spanyol'' (compare with ''España'' in
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
).
Until 1972, this digraph was spelled ''nj'' in the Indonesian standard.
Spanish
In Old Spanish scripts, the graph ''ny'' was widely used, along with ''nn'' and ''ni'', to represent the same palatal sound as Catalan, ; however since standardization it has been replaced with ''
ñ''. Despite this, ''ny'' may be found in modern
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
where ''ñ'' is not available, such as in earlier computer programming or Internet domain names.
Similarly, ''ny'' is also used in
Judaeo-Spanish.
Swahili
In
Swahili, ny represents the palatal nasal /ɲ/. As other consonant sounds, it can only appear at the beginning of a syllable. Examples:
* Kenya
* Kinywa = mouth
* Nyoka = snake
* Nyota = star
* Mnyama / wanyama = animal / animals
* Nyama = meat
* Punyeto = masturbation
See also
*
Catalan alphabet
*
Hungarian alphabet
*
ñ (énye)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ny (Digraph)
Catalan language
Hungarian language
Latin-script digraphs