E

Not to be confused with ㅌ or ∈.
For other uses of "E", see E (disambiguation).
For technical reasons, E# redirects here. For the musical note, see E♯ (musical note).
For the mathematical constant, see e (mathematical constant).
Basic Latin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd    
Ee Ff Gg Hh
Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn
Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt
Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

E ( /ˈiː/; named e, plural ees)[1] is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech,[2] Danish,[2] Dutch,[2] English,[3] French,[4] German,[5] Hungarian,[2] Latin,[2] Norwegian,[2] Spanish,[6] and Swedish languages.[2]

Contents

History

Egyptian hieroglyph
q’		 Phoenician
he		 Etruscan
E		 Greek
Epsilon		 Roman/Cyrillic
E

⟨E⟩ differs little from its derivational source, the Greek letter epsilon ⟨Ε⟩. In etymology, the Semitic hê has been suggested to have started as a praying or calling human figure (hillul 'jubilation'), and was probably based on a similar Egyptian hieroglyph that indicated a different pronunciation. In Semitic, the letter represented /h/ (and /e/ in foreign words), in Greek hê became epsilon with the value /e/. Etruscans and Romans followed this usage. 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 /e/ (as in met or bed) remains a mid vowel.

Usage

Like other Latin vowels, ⟨e⟩ came in a long and a short variety. Originally, the only difference was in length but later on, short ⟨e⟩ represented /ɛ/. In other languages that use the ⟨e⟩, it represents various other phonetic values, sometimes with accents to indicate contrasts (⟨e ê é è ë ē ĕ ě ẽ ė ẹ ę ẻ⟩).

Digraphs with ⟨e⟩ are common in many languages to indicate diphthongs and 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.

In English, the salient phenomenon silent e's, although arising from old inflections that have been dropped, still retain a function as they indicate that certain vowels in the word are long vowels (for example rat has a short vowel and rate has a long one).

⟨E⟩ is the most common (or highest frequency) letter in the English alphabet (starting off the typographer's phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU) and several other European languages, which has implications in both cryptography and data compression. This makes it a hard and popular letter to use when writing lipograms. Ernest Vincent Wright's Gadsby (1939) is considered a "dreadful" novel, and that "at least part of Wright's narrative issues were caused by language limitations imposed by the lack of E."[7] Both Georges Perec's novel A Void (La Disparition) (1969) and its English translation by Gilbert Adair omit ⟨e⟩ and are considered better works.[8]

Related letters and other similar characters

Computing codes

character E e
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E LATIN SMALL LETTER E
character encoding decimal hex decimal hex
Unicode 69 0045 101 0065
UTF-8 69 45 101 65
Numeric character reference E E e e
ASCII 1 69 45 101 65
EBCDIC family 197 C5 133 85

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

Other representations

NATO phonetic Morse code
Echo ·
Signal flag Flag semaphore Braille

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.

References

  1. ^ "E" a letter Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993). Ees is the plural of the name of the letter; the plural of the letter itself is E's, Es, e's, or es.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Kelk, Brian. "Letter frequencies". UK Free Software Network. http://www.bckelk.ukfsn.org/words/etaoin.html. Retrieved 2008-06-25. 
  3. ^ Lewand, Robert. "Relative Frequencies of Letters in General English Plain text". Cryptographical Mathematics. Central College. http://pages.central.edu/emp/LintonT/classes/spring01/cryptography/letterfreq.html. Retrieved 2008-06-25. 
  4. ^ "Frequency of Occurrence of Letters in French". Santa Cruz Public Libraries. http://www.santacruzpl.org/readyref/files/g-l/ltfrqfr.shtml. Retrieved 2008-06-25. 
  5. ^ "Frequency of Occurrence of Letters in German". Santa Cruz Public Libraries. http://scplweb.santacruzpl.org/readyref/files/g-l/ltfrqger.shtml. Retrieved 2008-06-25. 
  6. ^ "Frequency of Occurrence of Letters in Spanish". Santa Cruz Public Libraries. http://www.santacruzpl.org/readyref/files/g-l/ltfrqsp.shtml. Retrieved 2008-06-25. 
  7. ^ Ross Eckler, Making the Alphabet Dance: Recreational Word Play. New York: St. Martin's Press (1996): 3
  8. ^ Eckler (1996): 3. Perec's novel "was so well written that at least some reviewers never realized the existence of a letter constraint."

External links

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Letter E with diacritics
Éé Èè Ĕĕ Êê Ếế Ềề Ễễ Ểể Ěě Ëë Ẽẽ Ėė Ȩȩ Ḝḝ Ęę Ēē Ḗḗ Ḕḕ Ẻẻ Ȅȅ Ȇȇ Ẹẹ Ệệ Ḙḙ Ḛḛ Ɇɇ
ᶒ ⱸ
Related