N 21290 225602479 2008-07-14T14:37:17Z JAnDbot 1725149 robot Adding: [[mzn:N]], [[se:N]] {{otherusesof}} {{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>&amp;#78;</tt>" and "<tt>&amp;#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]]