ن

nūn, the thirty-second letter of the Urdū or Hindūstānīalphabet (the twenty-ninth of the Persian, and twenty-fifth of the Arabic).. It corresponds, properly speaking, to the dental नna, the twentieth consonant of the Nāgarīor Hindīalphabet (the fifth letter of the fourth or dental class), and has much the sound of the English n (by which it is represented in the Roman character); but it is also used to represent the Nāgarīnasals ङ, ञ, and ण, and also the anusvār (?), and the anunāsik, or ćandr-vindu ◌ँ, and hence has, very frequently, a nasal sound, represented in the Roman character by ṅ(except in the case of ण, which is Romanized by ṇ), e.g. saṅgat, saṅsār, dāṅt, sāṅp, ghūṅṭ, soṅṭā, pheṅṭa; indeed, the general tendency is to nasalize the nūnwhen it is quiescent after a long vowel or a diphthong, whether in the middle or at the end of a word; and that even in cases where the nis really dental (e.g. zamāṅfor zamān, zamīṅfor zamīn, zabūṅfor zabūn, etc.). Nūnor nquiescent, preceded by a short vowel, and followed by the letter b, or p, generally has the sound of m, e.g. سنپت sampat, منبر mimbar. Nūnor nis occasionally substituted for l, as nūrī= lūrī, nāor nī(dim. aff.)=lāor lī; these, and other similar substitutions, will be found noticed in their proper places. In reckoning by abjad, ndenotes 50; and, in almanacs, it signifies the conjunct aspect of the stars:—na-kār, s.m. The letter, or the sound, na.