Mongolian Letter Ang

It writes Mongolian ang as one nasal consonant.

In Latin spellings of Mongolian, ng represents the sound at the end of English “sing”: one nasal consonant, made with the back of the tongue while air flows through the nose. In ordinary Mongolian spelling, ᠩ appears within a syllable or at its end, never at the start of a word.

Traditional Mongolian writing developed from Old Uyghur around the beginning of the thirteenth century. Old Uyghur writing used the Sogdian script, which had descended from Aramaic. Mongolian kept the inherited column-writing tradition. A carved stone inscription called the Yisüngge stele is generally treated as the oldest surviving example of Mongolian writing in this script, probably dated 1224 or 1225.

Why was the Mongolian script made?

It let the Mongol court issue, store, and send written orders.

The Mongol administration used written documents for decrees and records. Original decrees were written in Uyghur-Mongolian script, translated into recipients’ scripts, sealed, and stored.

Later, this writing tradition carried legal texts, histories, literature, and Buddhist works. The Oirats, a Mongolic people, reshaped it into Todo. Manchu scribes adapted it to write Manchu, a different language.

Why does ᠩ change shape in a word?

Its position changes the form chosen by the font.

In connected Mongolian writing, this letter has medial and final forms. The receiving font and shaper choose the visible form from its position and neighboring letters. A zero-width joiner, an invisible control character, can force an initial form in a test sequence.

For web layout, Mongolian runs top to bottom, with columns advancing left to right. The CSS setting writing-mode: vertical-lr supports that flow; a horizontal fallback can leave the script sideways.