ں — nun-ghunna
«nun-ghunna» is a consonant of the Urdu script, read as “n (nasal)”. A nasal tail: the vowel before it escapes through the nose, lips and tongue never close — as the n of French "bon". ماں is almost maa sung through the nose. For example, in the word “ماں” — mother. The Urdu alphabet has 38 letters in total. The circle of ن without its dot. Word-finally it stands in place of an ordinary n when the nasal sound colors the vowel instead of sounding as a consonant. It appears, for example, in the word “جی ہاں” — yes.
In short
| Character | ں |
| Name | nun-ghunna |
| Sound | n (nasal) |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 10th of 40: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are ڑ and ھ, appears in 259 words of this site.
How to type ں
- On a phone: add the Urdu keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+06BA and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 06BA.
- Unicode code point: U+06BA. With it, the character can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
A nasal tail: the vowel before it escapes through the nose, lips and tongue never close — as the n of French "bon". ماں is almost maa sung through the nose
Other written forms
The same character is written differently on a shop sign and in a book. Here are all the forms you may meet.
| Form | Character | Note |
|---|---|---|
| initial | ںـ | — |
| medial | ـںـ | — |
| final | ـں | — |
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- ماںmanmother
The character in the “ٹ ڈ ڑ ں ھ — letters the neighbors do not have” group
Urdu took a borrowed skeleton and built its own sounds on it. Three retroflexes — the tongue curls back and taps the roof of the mouth. The nasal sign sends the vowel up into the nose. And do-chashmi he ھ reads nothing by itself: it turns the letter before it into a puff of air. This family is the first thing that gives an Urdu text away on sight.
Words with this character
- جی ہاںdzhi hanyes
- جی نہیںdzhi nahinno
- میں ٹھیک ہوںmain thik hunI am fine
- پھر ملتے ہیںphir milte hainsee you
- کوئی بات نہیںkoy bat nahinyou are welcome
- میںmainI
- آپ کہاں سے ہیں؟ap kahan se hain?where are you from?
- میں روس سے ہوںmain rus se hunI am from Russia
- مجھے سمجھ نہیں آئیmujhe samajh nahin aiI don’t understand
- آپ انگریزی بولتے ہیں؟ap angrezi bolte hain?do you speak English?
- کہاںkahanwhere?
- یہاںyahanhere
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «nun-ghunna» it is “n (nasal)”, as in the word “ماں”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 38 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Urdu character ں read?
As “n (nasal)” — it is a consonant of the Urdu script. A nasal tail: the vowel before it escapes through the nose, lips and tongue never close — as the n of French "bon". ماں is almost maa sung through the nose. For example, in the word “ماں” — mother.
What is the letter ں called?
Nun-ghunna. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Urdu script: it is called “nun-ghunna” and reads as “n (nasal)”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.