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Learn more about "E"
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E
E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English language|English is spelled '''e''' (), plural '''ees''' (rare).["E" ''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1993). The plural of the letter, as opposed to the name, is E's, ''E''s, e's, or ''e''s.] The letter ''E'' is the most commonly used letter in the Czech language|Czech,History
E is derived from the Greek alphabet|Greek letter epsilon which is much the same in appearance (Ε, ε) and function. In etymology, the Semitic ''He (letter)|hê'' probably first represented a praying or calling human figure (''hillul'' jubilation), and was probably based on a similar Egyptian hieroglyph that was pronounced and used quite differently. In Semitic, the letter represented (and in foreign words), in Greek ''hê'' became Εψιλον (Epsilon) with the value . Etruria|Etruscans and Ancient Rome|Romans followed this usage. Arising from the Great Vowel Shift, English language|English usage is rather different, namely (derived from in "me" or "bee") whereas other words like "bed" are closer to Latin and other languages in usage.
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 . In other languages that use the Letter (alphabet)|letter E or 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 starting with E are common in many languages to indicate diphthongs and monophthongs, such as EA or EE for or in English, EI for in German language|German, or EU for in French language|French or in German.
At the end of a word, E is very often silent in English (silent e), where old noun inflections have been dropped, although even when silent at the end of a word it often causes vowels in the word to be pronounced as diphthongs, conventionally called Long vowel#Long vowels in English|long vowels (compare as a noun ''rat'' and as a verb ''rate'').
The letter 'E' is the most common (or highest Frequency (statistics)|frequency) letter in the English language (starting off the typographer's phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU) and many other related languages, which has implications in both cryptography and data compression. This makes it a difficult and popular letter to use when writing lipograms. Ernest Vincent Wright's ''Gadsby (novel)|Gadsby'' (1939), is considered a "dreadful" novel, and that "at least part of Wright's narrative difficulties were caused by language restrictions imposed by the lack of ''E''."[Ross Eckler, ''Making the Alphabet Dance: Recreational Word Play''. New York: St. Martin's Press (1996): 3] Both Georges Perec's novel ''A Void (novel)|A Void'' (''La Disparition'') (1969) and its English translation by Gilbert Adair omit the letter E and are considered better works.[Eckler (1996): 3. Perec's novel "was so well written that at least some reviewers never realized the existence of a letter constraint."]
Codes for computing
In Unicode the majuscule|capital E is codepoint U+0045 and the lower case e is U+0065.
The ASCII code for capital E is 69 and for lowercase e is 101; or in Binary numeral system|binary 01000101 and 01100101, correspondingly.
The EBCDIC code for capital E is 197 and for lowercase e is 133.
The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "E" and "e" for upper and lower case respectively.
See also
Similar Latin letters:
- Ɛɛ : Ɛ|Latin epsilon
Similar non-Latin letters:
- Εε : Epsilon|Greek epsilon
- Ее : Ye (Cyrillic)|Cyrillic Ye/E
- Ёё : Yo (Cyrillic)|Cyrillic Yo
- Єє : Ukrainian Ye
- Ээ : E (Cyrillic)|Cyrillic backwards E
Similar phonetic symbols:
- : Close-mid front unrounded vowel
- : Open-mid front unrounded vowel
Special symbols similar to the letter E:
- ℮ : Estimated sign (used on prepackaged goods for sale within the European Union).
- € : Euro sign
References
Category:Latin letters
Category:Vowel letters
simple:E
zh-yue:E
bat-smg:E
Related Images
Sources: StartLearningNow, Wikipedia | Usage license: GNU FDL
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