| N | |
| Letter: | N n |
| Script: | Latin script |
| Typedesc: | ic and logographic |
| Language: | Latin language |
| Phonemes: | [{{IPAlink|n}}] [{{IPAlink|ŋ}}] [{{IPAlink|ɲ}}] [{{IPAlink|ɳ}}] [nˠ] [{{IPAlink|ⁿ}}] [{{IPAlink|̃|◌̃}}] |
| Unicode: | U+004E, U+006E |
| Alphanumber: | 14 |
| Fam1: | |
| Fam6: | Ν ν |
| Usageperiod: | ~−700 to present |
| Children: | ₦ Ƞ Ŋ ɧ ʩ |
| Sisters: | Н Ң Ӊ Ӈ Ԋ נ ן ن ܢ ނ Ն ն Մ մ ࠍ ነ ᚾ Ꮋ Ꮑ Ꮓ |
| Associates: | n(x), nh, ng, ny |
| Direction: | Left-to-right |
N, or n, is the fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages, and others worldwide. Its name in English is en (pronounced), plural ens.[1]
Some hold that they used the same snake symbol to represent N, with a great proponent of this theory being Alan Gardiner,[3] because their word for "snake" may have begun with n (an example of a possible word being nahash[4]). However, this theory has become disputed.[5] The name for the letter in the Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic alphabets is nun, which means "fish" in some of these languages. This possibly connects the letter to the hieroglyph for a water ripple, which phonetically makes the n sound.[6] The sound value of the letter was pronounced as //n//—as in Greek, Etruscan, Latin, and modern languages.
| (Pinyin) | pronounced as /link/ | |
|---|---|---|
| English | pronounced as /link/, silent | |
| French | pronounced as /link/ | |
| German | pronounced as /link/ | |
| pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Spanish | pronounced as /link/ | |
| Turkish | pronounced as /link/ |
In English, (n) usually represents a voiced alveolar nasal pronounced as //n//, but can represent other nasal consonants due to assimilation. For example, before a velar plosive (as in ink or jungle), (n) represents a voiced velar nasal pronounced as //ŋ//.
(n) is generally silent when it is preceded by an (m) at the end of words, as in hymn; however, it is pronounced in this combination when occurring word medially, as in hymnal. Other consonants are often silent when they precede an (n) at the beginning of an English word. Examples include gnome, knife, mnemonic, and pneumonia.
The letter N is the sixth-most common letter and the second-most commonly used consonant in the English language (after (t)).[7]
The letter (n) represents a voiced dental nasal pronounced as //n̪// or voiced alveolar nasal pronounced as //n// in virtually all languages that use the Latin alphabet. In many languages, these nasal consonants assimilate with the consonant that follows them to produce other nasal consonants.
In Italian and French, (gn) represents a palatal nasal pronounced as //ɲ//. The Portuguese and Vietnamese spelling for this sound is (nh), while Spanish, Breton, and a few other languages use the letter (ñ).
A common digraph with (n) is (ng), which represents a voiced velar nasal pronounced as //ŋ// in a variety of languages.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, (n) represents the voiced alveolar nasal pronounced as //n//.
See main article: article and N (disambiguation).
N
Small letter n with mid-height left hook was used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language.[18]