E
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with
ㅌ or
∈.
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]
[edit] History
Egyptian hieroglyph
q’ | Proto-Semitic
H | Phoenician
he | Etruscan
E | Greek
Epsilon | Roman/Cyrillic
E |
| | | | | |
‹E› differs little from its derived source, the
Greek letter
epsilon ‹Ε›. In
etymology, the
Semitic hê probably first represented 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.