Bopomofo Letter Gn

ㄬ was an older Zhuyin symbol for a palatal nasal—the nasal sound in Spanish ñ—written gn in Old National Pronunciation. As of 2026, standard Mandarin Zhuyin leaves it out, while some Taiwanese dialect guides use it for that sound. Its shape was adapted from the Chinese character 广.

Text symbol

What ㄬ means

It marked a sound in an earlier Mandarin pronunciation standard.

Zhuyin is a set of phonetic symbols used to teach Mandarin pronunciation and annotate Chinese writing. The first system was created in 1913 and released in 1918; ㄬ was included from the start. Its outline was adapted from the Chinese character 广, whose older reading supplied the symbol’s sound value.

Old National Pronunciation assigned ㄬ the palatal nasal written gn in that system. A Beijing-based standard replaced that system in 1932, and standard Mandarin Zhuyin stopped using ㄬ. Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols, an extension designed in 1946 to record Taiwanese dialect sounds, reused it in some dialect descriptions for [ɲ].

Part of the collection

ㄅ

Bopomofo (Zhuyin Symbols)

Who writes ㄬ

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Questions people ask

Why does ㄬ show as a box on some devices?

Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.