Ny (digraph)

Ny is a digraph in a number of languages such as Catalan, Ganda, Filipino/Tagalog, Hungarian and Malay. In most of these languages, including all of the ones named above, it denotes the palatal nasal (/ɲ/).

It has had widespread use for languages of West Africa, though in some countries, the IPA letter ɲ is now used.

It is sometimes used in modern Spanish where ñ cannot be used, such as in earlier computer programming or Internet domain names.^[1]

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. 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.^[2]

Catalan

In Catalan, ny is not considered a single letter but a consonantal digraph (n followed by y) to represent /ɲ/. 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. Its name is eny (/ɛɲ/), and it represents the palatal nasal (/ɲ/). Even mere sequences of n and y that represent different sounds are considered instances of this letter; this holds true in acronyms 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
• ernyő = umbrella
• zsivány = knave

Indonesian

In Indonesian, ny represents the palatal nasal /ɲ/. Until 1972, this digraph was spelled nj. For example, Spain is called Spanyol (compare with España in Spanish).

Spanish

In Old Spanish scripts, the graph ny was widely used, along with nn and ni, to represent the same palatal sound as Catalan, [ɲ]; however since standardization it has been replaced with ñ. Despite this, ny may be found in modern Spanish where ñ is not available, such as in earlier computer programming or Internet domain names.

Similarly, ny is also used in Judaeo-Spanish.

See also

• Catalan alphabet
• Hungarian alphabet
• ñ (énye)

References

1. FAQ about .es domain names: Cuando se pueda usar la letra “ñ”, ¿existe alguna preferencia para solicitar nombres de dominio? at the Wayback Machine (archived September 26, 2006). N and ny are mentioned as substitutes for ñ.
2. Estudio de Filolochía Aragonesa. Propuesta Ortografica de l'Academia de l'Aragonés. Edicions Dichitals de l'Academia de l'Aragonés, Zaragoza, 2010.