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 /ˈiː/); plural es, Es, or E's.[1]
In English, the name of the letter is the "long E" sound, pronounced /ˈiː/. In most other languages, its name matches the letter's pronunciation in open syllables.
Pronunciation of the name of the letter ⟨e⟩ in European languages
The Latin letter 'E' differs little from its source, the Greek letter epsilon, 'Ε'. This in turn comes from the Semitic letter hê, 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, hê became the letter epsilon, used to represent /e/. The various forms of the Old Italic script and the Latin alphabet 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 /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], [e̞], [ɛ], or some variation (such as a nasalized version) of these sounds, often with diacritics (as: ⟨e êéèëēĕěẽėẹęẻ⟩) 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.
The umlaut diacritic ¨ used above a vowel letter in German and other languages to indicate a fronted or front vowel (this sign originated as a superscript e)
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.
See also
E notation: used by scientific calculators to indicate a power of ten multiplier
E-number – Codes for food additivesPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
Notes
^Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
References
^"E". Oxford Dictionary of English (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. 2010. ISBN9780199571123. noun (plural Es or E's)
