N Explained

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:	I10
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]

History

One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like the English (J), because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet. It is speculated by some, such as archeologist Douglas Petrovich, that Semitic speakers working in Egypt adapted hieroglyphs to create the first alphabet.^[2]

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.

Use in writing systems

Pronunciation of (n) by language! Orthography! Phonemes

(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/

English

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]

Other languages

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.

Other systems

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, (n) represents the voiced alveolar nasal pronounced as //n//.

Other uses

See main article: article and N (disambiguation).

• In mathematics, the italic form n is a particularly common symbol for a variable quantity which represents a natural number. The set of natural numbers is referred to as

N .

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

• N with diacritics: Ń ń Ñ ñ Ň ň Ǹ ǹ Ṅ ṅ Ṇ ṇ Ņ ņ Ṉ ṉ Ṋ ṋ Ꞥ ꞥ ᵰ^[8] ᶇ^[9]
• Phonetic alphabet symbols related to N (the International Phonetic Alphabet only uses lowercase, but uppercase forms are used in some other writing systems):
  • Ŋ ŋ : Latin letter eng, which represents a velar nasal in the IPA
  • : Small letter eng with palatal hook, which is used in phonetic transcription^{[10] [11]}
  • : Small letter reversed eng, which is an extension to IPA for disordered speech (extIPA)^[12]
  • Ɲ ɲ : Latin letter Ɲ, which represents a palatal nasal or an alveolo-palatal nasal in the IPA
  • ⁿ : Superscript small n, which represents a nasal release in the IPA
  • Ƞ ƞ : Latin letter Ƞ (encoded in Unicode as "N with long right leg"), a mostly obsolete letter used to transcribe various nasal sounds
  • ɳ : Latin letter n with a hook, which represents a retroflex nasal in the IPA
  • ᶯ : Modifier letter small n with retroflex hook^[13]
  • ᶮ : Modifier letter small n with left hook^[9]
  • ɴ : Small capital N, which represents a uvular nasal in the IPA
  • ᶰ : Modifier letter small capital N^[9]
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to N:^[14]
  • • • • • • • • _n : Subscript small n was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902^[15]
• Teuthonista phonetic transcription system uses and ^[16]
• ȵ : N with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics^[17]
• Ꞑ ꞑ : N with descender

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]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

• : Semitic letter Nun, from which the following symbols originally derive:
  • Ν ν : Greek letter Nu, from which the following symbols originally derive:
    • : Coptic letter Ne
    • Н н : Cyrillic letter En
    • : Old Italic N, which is the ancestor of modern Latin N
    • : Gothic letter nauþs

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

• ₦ : Nigerian Naira

Other representations

Computing

Other

See also

• • – phonetic symbol

Notes and References

1. "N" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "en," op. cit.
2. Web site: 2016-11-19 . Oldest alphabet identified as Hebrew . 2024-06-24 . en-US.
3. Book: The world's writing systems . 1996 . Oxford University Press . 978-0-19-507993-7 . Daniels . Peter T. . New York . en . Bright . William.
4. Web site: Goldwasser . Orly . How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs . 2024-06-24 . The BAS Library . en-US.
5. Book: LeBlanc, Paul . Deciphering the Proto-Sinaitic Script: Making Sense of the Wadi El-Hol and Serabit El-Khadim Early Alphabetic Inscriptions . 2017 . SubclassPress . 9780995284401.
6. Web site: Gardiner's Sign List of Egyptian Hieroglyphs – Egyptian Hieroglyphs . 2024-06-24 . en-US.
7. Web site: English Letter Frequency.
8. Web site: L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS. 2003-09-30. Peter. Constable.
9. Web site: L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS. 2004-04-19. Peter. Constable.
10. Web site: L2/20-125R: Unicode request for expected IPA retroflex letters and similar letters with hooks. 2020-07-11. Kirk. Miller.
11. Web site: L2/21-021: Reference doc numbers for L2/20-266R "Consolidated code chart of proposed phonetic characters" and IPA etc. code point and name changes. 2020-12-07. Deborah. Anderson.
12. Web site: L2/20-116R: Expansion of the extIPA and VoQS. 2020-07-11. Kirk. Miller. Martin. Ball.
13. Web site: L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS. 2004-04-19. Peter. Constable.
14. Web site: L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS. 2002-03-20. Michael. Everson. Michael Everson. etal.
15. Web site: L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. 2009-01-27. Klaas. Ruppel. Tero. Aalto. Michael. Everson.
16. Web site: L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS. 2011-06-02. Michael. Everson. Alois. Dicklberger. Karl. Pentzlin. Eveline. Wandl-Vogt.
17. Web site: L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS. 2001-09-20. Richard. Cook. Michael. Everson.
18. Web site: L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam. 2021-07-16. Kirk. Miller. Neil. Rees.