Nh is a digraph of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

, a combination of N and H. Together with '' lh'' and the

interpunct An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot, centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in Classical Latin. ( Word-separating spaces did not appe ...

, it is a typical feature of

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...

, a language illustrated by

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

troubadour A troubadour (, ; ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female equivalent is usually called a ''trobairitz''. The tr ...

s. It commonly represents the

voiced palatal nasal The voiced palatal nasal is a type of consonant used in some Speech communication, spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter ''n'' with a leftward-pointing tail protru ...

, which is the same sound as the Spanish letter Ñ.

African languages

In some

African languages The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SI ...

, such as Gogo, nh is a voiceless . In the pre-1985 orthography of Guinea for its languages, nh represented a velar , which is currently written ŋ.

Asian languages

In the

Gwoyeu Romatzyh Gwoyeu Romatzyh ( ; GR) is a system for writing Standard Chinese using the Latin alphabet. It was primarily conceived by Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982), who led a group of linguists on the National Languages Committee in refining the system betwe ...

romanization of

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...

, initial ''nh-'' indicates an even tone on a syllable beginning in , which is otherwise spelled ''n-.''

Japanese

Early

romanization In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...

s of Japanese, influenced by Portuguese orthography, sometimes used nh to represent a prepalatal. Today, this is usually written ny.

Vietnamese

In Vietnamese, nh represents a palatal word-initially. It was formerly considered a distinct letter, but is no longer. When this digraph occurs word-finally, its phonetic value varies between dialects: * In the northern dialect, it represents a

velar nasal The voiced velar nasal, also known as eng, engma, or agma (from Greek 'fragment'), is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''E ...

(), just as ng does; however, its presence may alter the pronunciation of the preceding vowel. For example, ''banh'' is pronounced , as opposed to (''bang''). * In the southern dialect, it represents an

alveolar nasal The voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol i ...

() and shortens the preceding vowel. The

Vietnamese alphabet The Vietnamese alphabet (, ) is the modern writing script for the Vietnamese language. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages like French language, French, originally developed by Francisco de Pina (1585–1625), a missionary from P ...

inherited this digraph from the

Portuguese orthography Portuguese orthography is based on the Latin alphabet and makes use of the acute accent, the circumflex accent, the grave accent, the tilde, and the cedilla to denote stress, vowel height, nasalization, and other sound changes. The diaeresis (dia ...

Australian languages

In the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages, nh represents a dental . Due to allophony, it may also represent a palatal .

American languages

In Purépecha and Pipil, it is a velar nasal, . In the Cuoq Orthography in Algonquin, and in the Fiero Orthography in

Ojibwe The Ojibwe (; Ojibwe writing systems#Ojibwe syllabics, syll.: ᐅᒋᐺ; plural: ''Ojibweg'' ᐅᒋᐺᒃ) are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland (''Ojibwewaki'' ᐅᒋᐺᐘᑭ) covers much of the Great Lakes region and the Great Plains, n ...

and Odaawaa, it indicates the vowel preceding it is nasalized. While in the Cuoq orthograph it is in all positions, in the Fiero orthography it is a final form; its non-final form is written as .

European languages

Occitan

, nh represents a palatal . For n·h, see .

Portuguese

In Portuguese, nh represents a palatal . Due to allophony, it may represent the nasal palatal approximant in most Brazilian, Santomean and Angolan dialects. It is not considered a distinct letter. Portuguese borrowed this digraph from Occitan.Jean-Pierre JUGE (2001) ''Petit précis - Chronologie occitane - Histoire & civilisation'', p. 25

Galician

In Galician, there are two diverging norms which give ''nh'' differing values. * According to the Real Academia Galega norm, nh represents a velar , while ñ represents a palatal . * According to the reintegrationist norm, mh represents a velar nasal , while nh represents a palatal . In neither norm is ''nh'' considered a distinct letter.

Welsh

In Welsh, nh is a

voiceless alveolar nasal The voiceless alveolar nasal is a type of consonant in some languages. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represent the sound are and , combinations of the letter for the voiced alveolar nasal and a diacritic indicating voic ...

, (a under the nasal mutation).

References

External links

Practical Orthography of African Languages
{{Latin script Latin-script digraphs