Malayalam Letter Nga

Use a Malayalam keyboard or phonetic input method.

The Mac Malayalam QWERTY layout checked 2026-09-12 maps z to ങ; the Windows Malayalam INSCRIPT layout checked that day uses Shift+U.

Windows Malayalam Phonetic, checked 2026-09-12, accepts Latin transliteration. Type nga and choose the Malayalam suggestion.

What sound does the Malayalam nga letter make?

It marks the “ng” nasal heard at the end of “sing.”

The Malayalam nga is a velar nasal: the tongue closes at the back of the mouth while air passes through the nose. Bare ങ includes a short a; a vowel sign changes it, while the Malayalam virama mark cancels it.

In ങ്ക, nga joins ക; in ങ്ങ, it doubles. In തെങ്ങ് (“coconut tree”), it ends the word as ങ്, with the short vowel suppressed.

How did the Malayalam nga letter evolve?

Malayalam writing developed through several related scripts.

Brahmi, an ancestor of many Indian scripts, is attested in Ashokan inscriptions in the third century BCE. The oldest known written Malayalam text is the Vazhappally inscription, written in Vatteluttu about 830 CE. By the early 13th century, a systematized Malayalam alphabet had emerged; these dates chart the script's history, not the exact origin of ങ's present shape.

Malayalam writing drew on Vatteluttu and Grantha, a script used for Sanskrit. Writers combined them when Vatteluttu lacked forms for Sanskrit sounds; modern Malayalam follows a Grantha-influenced line.

In Garshuni Malayalam—Malayalam written with adapted letters from the Syriac script—texts from the Malankara and Kodungallur regions of Kerala recorded the same nga sound by the late 16th–early 17th century. A 1971 spelling reform favored forms easier to set with typewriters. Traditional and reformed shaping can join, stack, or separate clusters without changing their sequence or sound.