Palatal Nasal

The palatal nasal is a type of consonant, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ ɲ⟩, a lowercase letter n with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom of the left stem of the letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J. The IPA symbol ⟨ ɲ⟩ is similar to ⟨ɳ ⟩, the symbol for the retroflex nasal, which has a rightward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem, and to ⟨ŋ⟩, the symbol for the velar nasal, which has a leftward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem.

Palatal nasals are more common than the palatal stops, and . In Spanish and languages whose writing systems are influenced by Spanish orthography, this sound is represented with the letter eñe (ñ); the same is true for Occitan, the source of the Portuguese digraph ene-agá (nh), used by languages whose writing systems are influenced by Portuguese orthography, such as Vietnamese.

The symbol ⟨ ɲ⟩ is used to represent an alveolo-palatal nasal in some languages, since there is no IPA symbol with the latter meaning, and no language distinguishes the two.