N
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robot Adding: [[mzn:N]], [[se:N]]
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{{wiktionarypar2|N|n}}
{{Latin alphabet navbox|uc=N|lc=n}}
'''N''' is the fourteenth letter in the [[Latin alphabet]]. Its name in [[English language|English]] is spelled '''en''' ({{pronEng|ɛn}}).<ref>"N" ''Oxford English Dictionary,'' 2nd edition (1989); ''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1993); "en," op. cit.</ref>
== History of the forms ==
One of the most common [[snake]] [[Egyptian hieroglyphs|hieroglyph]] was used in [[Egypt]]ian writing to stand for a sound like English '[[J]]', because the Egyptian word for "snake" was ''djet''. It is speculated that [[Semitic]] people working in Egypt adapted hieroglyphics to create the first [[alphabet]], and that they used the same snake symbol to represent N, because their word for "snake" may have begun with that sound. However, the name for the letter in the [[Phoenician alphabet|Phoenician]], [[Hebrew]], [[Aramaic]] and Arabic alphabets is ''[[Nun (letter)|nun]]'', which means "[[fish]]" in some of these languages. The sound value of the letter was {{IPA|/n/}} - as in [[Greek language|Greek]], [[Etruscan language|Etruscan]], [[Latin]] and all modern languages.
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;text-align:center;"
|- bgcolor="#EEEEEE"
! Egyptian hieroglyph for 'J'
! Proto-Semitic N
! Phoenician N
! Etruscan N
! Greek Nu
|-----
|<hiero>D</hiero>
|[[Image:Proto-semiticN-01.png]]
|[[Image:PhoenicianN-01.png]]
|[[Image:EtruscanN-01.png]]
|[[Image:Nu uc lc.svg|64px]]
|}
== Usage ==
N serves as a [[dental nasal|dental]] or [[alveolar nasal]] in virtually all languages that use the Latin alphabet. A common digraph with <n> is <ng>, which produces a [[velar nasal]] in a variety of languages, usually final in [[English language|English]]. In languages like Italian and French, <gn> represents a [[palatal nasal]] ({{IPA|/ɲ/}}). The Portuguese spelling for this sound is <nh>. In English, ''n'' is silent when it is preceded by an ''m'', in words like ''hymn'' (although it is pronounced in words such as ''damnation'').
In the [[Help:IPA|International Phonetic Alphabet]], the lowercase {{IPA|[n]}} represents the alveolar nasal sound. A small capital {{IPA|[ɴ]}} represents the [[uvular nasal]].
N is the second-most commonly used [[consonant]] in the [[English language]] (after [[T]]).
== Codes for computing ==
{{Letter
|NATO=November
|Morse=–·
|Character=N
|Braille=⠝
}}
In [[Unicode]] the [[majuscule|capital]] N is codepoint U+004E and the [[lower case]] n is U+006E.
The [[ASCII]] code for capital N is 78 and for lowercase n is 110; or in [[Binary numeral system|binary]] 01001110 and 01101110, correspondingly.
The [[EBCDIC]] code for capital N is 213 and for lowercase n is 149.
The [[numeric character reference]]s in [[HTML]] and [[XML]] are "<tt>&#78;</tt>" and "<tt>&#110;</tt>" for upper and lower case respectively.
== See also ==
{{Commons|N}}
*[[Ń]]
*[[Ñ]]
*[[Ň]]
{{Latin alphabet}}
==References==
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Latin letters]]
[[af:N]]
[[als:N]]
[[ar:N]]
[[arc:N]]
[[ast:N]]
[[az:N]]
[[bs:N]]
[[br:N (lizherenn)]]
[[ca:N]]
[[cs:N]]
[[co:N]]
[[cy:N]]
[[da:N]]
[[de:N]]
[[el:N]]
[[es:N]]
[[eo:N]]
[[eu:N]]
[[fa:N]]
[[fr:N (lettre)]]
[[fur:N]]
[[gan:N]]
[[gd:N]]
[[gl:N]]
[[ko:N]]
[[hr:N]]
[[ilo:N]]
[[is:N]]
[[it:N]]
[[he:N]]
[[ka:N]]
[[kw:N]]
[[sw:N]]
[[ht:N]]
[[la:N]]
[[lv:N]]
[[lt:N]]
[[hu:N]]
[[mzn:N]]
[[nah:N]]
[[nl:N (letter)]]
[[ja:N]]
[[no:N]]
[[nn:N]]
[[nrm:N]]
[[uz:N (harf)]]
[[pl:N]]
[[pt:N]]
[[ro:N]]
[[qu:N]]
[[ru:N (латиница)]]
[[se:N]]
[[scn:N]]
[[simple:N]]
[[sk:N]]
[[sl:N]]
[[sr:N (слово латинице)]]
[[fi:N]]
[[sv:N]]
[[tl:N]]
[[th:N]]
[[vi:N]]
[[tr:N]]
[[uk:N (латиниця)]]
[[vo:N]]
[[yo:N]]
[[zh-yue:N]]
[[bat-smg:N]]
[[zh:N]]