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E

5th letter of the Latin alphabet From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

E
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E, or e, is the fifth letter and the second vowel 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 e (pronounced /ˈ/ ); plural es, Es, or E's.[1]

Quick Facts Usage, Writing system ...
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It is the most commonly used letter in many languages, including Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Latvian, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish.[2][3][4][5][6]

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Name

In English, the name of the letter is the "long E" sound, pronounced /ˈ/. In most other languages, its name matches the letter's pronunciation in open syllables.

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Pronunciation of the name of the letter e in European languages

History

More information Egyptian hieroglyph qʼ, Proto-Sinaitic ...

The Latin letter 'E' differs little from its source, the Greek letter epsilon, 'Ε'. This in turn comes from the Semitic letter , which has been suggested to have started as a praying or calling human figure (hillul, 'jubilation'), and was most likely based on a similar Egyptian hieroglyph that indicated a different pronunciation.

In Semitic, the letter represented /h/ (and /e/ in foreign words); in Greek, became the letter epsilon, used to represent /e/. The various forms of the Old Italic script and the Latin alphabet followed this usage.

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Use in writing systems

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More information Orthography, Phonemes ...

English

Although Middle English spelling used e to represent long and short /e/, the Great Vowel Shift changed long /eː/ (as in me or bee) to /iː/ while short /ɛ/ (as in met or bed) remained a mid vowel. In unstressed syllables, this letter is usually pronounced either as /ɪ/ or /ə/. In other cases, the letter is silent, generally at the end of words like queue.

Other languages

In the orthography of many languages, it represents either [e], [], [ɛ], or some variation (such as a nasalized version) of these sounds, often with diacritics (as: e ê é è ë ē ĕ ě ė ę ) to indicate contrasts. Less commonly, as in French, German, or Saanich, e represents a mid-central vowel /ə/. Digraphs with e are common to indicate either diphthongs or monophthongs, such as ea or ee for /iː/ or /eɪ/ in English, ei for /aɪ/ in German, and eu for /ø/ in French or /ɔɪ/ in German.

Other systems

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses e for the close-mid front unrounded vowel or the mid front unrounded vowel.

Frequency

E is the most common (or highest-frequency) letter in the English language alphabet and several other European languages,[7] which has implications in both cryptography and data compression. This makes it a harder letter to use when writing lipograms.

Other uses

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A scientific calculator display showing the Avogadro constant (6.02214076×1023 reciprocal moles) in E notation
  • In the hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system, "E" corresponds to the number 14 in decimal (base 10) counting.
  • "e" is also commonly used to denote Euler's number.

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

  • 𐤄: Semitic letter He (letter), from which the following symbols originally derive:
    • Ε ε: Greek letter Epsilon, from which the following symbols originally derive:
      • Е е: Cyrillic letter Ye
      • Є є: Ukrainian Ye
      • Э э: Cyrillic letter E
      • Ⲉ ⲉ: Coptic letter Ei
      • 𐌄: Old Italic E, which is the ancestor of modern Latin E
        • : Runic letter Ehwaz, which is possibly a descendant of Old Italic E
      • 𐌴: Gothic letter eyz

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

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Other representations

Computing

More information Preview, E ...

Other

In British Sign Language (BSL), the letter 'e' is signed by extending the index finger of the right hand touching the tip of index on the left hand, with all fingers of left hand open.

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See also

  • E notation: used by scientific calculators to indicate a power of ten multiplier
  • E-number – Codes for food additives

Notes

  1. Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

References

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