Heng (letter)

Heng
Heng
Ꜧ ꜧ
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic
Language of origin	Unified Northern Alphabet
History
Development	Ꜧ ꜧ;
Other
	This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

Heng is a letter of the Latin alphabet, originating as a typographic ligature of h and ŋ. It is used for a voiceless y-like sound,^{[clarification needed]} such as in Dania transcription of the Danish language.

Heng was used word-finally in early transcriptions of Mayan languages, where it may have represented a uvular fricative.

It is sometimes used to write Judeo-Tat.^{[citation needed]}

Heng has been occasionally used by phonologists to represent a jocular phoneme in English, which includes both [h] and [ŋ] as its allophones, to illustrate the limited usefulness of minimal pairs to distinguish phonemes. /h/ and /ŋ/ are separate phonemes in English, even though no minimal pair for them exists due to their complementary distribution.^[1]

Heng is also used in Bantu linguistics to indicate a voiced alveolar lateral fricative ([ɮ]).^[2]

Both U+A726 Ꜧ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER HENG and U+A727 ꜧ LATIN SMALL LETTER HENG are encoded in Unicode block Latin Extended-D; they were added with Unicode version 5.1 in April 2008.

^ Hornsby, David (2014). Linguistics: A Complete Introduction: Teach Yourself. John Murray Press. ISBN 9781444180343.
^ Wells, John (3 November 2006). "The symbol ɮ". John Wells’s phonetic blog. Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London. Retrieved 1 February 2018.

[1] Hornsby, David (2014). Linguistics: A Complete Introduction: Teach Yourself. John Murray Press. ISBN 9781444180343.

[2] Wells, John (3 November 2006). "The symbol ɮ". John Wells’s phonetic blog. Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London. Retrieved 1 February 2018.

[1]

[2]