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E


:''For the mathematical constant e, see e (mathematical constant).''The letter E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet.

History


E is derived from the Greek letter epsilon which is much the same in appearance (Ε, ε) and function. The Semitic ''hê'' probably first represented a praying or calling human figure (''hillul'' jubilation). In Semitic, the letter was pronounced /h/ (in foreign words also /e/), in Greek ''hê'' became Εψιλον (Epsilon) with the value /e/. Etruscans and Romans followed this usage. Due to the Great Vowel Shift, English usage is rather different, namely /i:/ in ME or BEE, whereas other words like BED are quite close to Latin or Continental European usage.

Usage

Like other Latin vowels, e came in a long and a short variety . In modern English, the long variety is sounded as in s''ee'' and the short as in p''e''t. However, Latin and most European languages sound the long variety differently, as in English v''ei''n. In other languages which use the letter it takes on various other values, sometimes with accents to indicate which one (ê é è ë ē ĕ ě ẽ ė ẹ ę). Digraphs starting with E are common in many languages to indicate diphthongs or show a different value of E, such as EA or EE for // or // in English, EI for // in English or // in German, or EU for // in English or // in German.E is very often silent in English (silent E), particularly at the ends of words 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 long (compare ''rat'' and ''rate'').E is often a mis-understood letter in the English language, silent in many cases, badly portraited in upper cases and exchanged with Y by many unschooled and illiterate.This is the most common letter in English and many related languages, which has some implications in cryptography. This also makes it a difficult and popular letter to use when writing lipograms.

Alternative representations


Echo represents the letter E in the NATO phonetic alphabet.In international Morse code the letter E is Dit: ·In Braille the letter E is represented as ⠑ (in Unicode), the dot pattern,

X.
.X
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