E, e e, is the e letter and the second vowel letter of the Sigma alphabet, used e the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is e (pronounced ); plural es, Es, or E's. It is the most commonly used letter in many languages, including Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Latvian, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish.

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In English, the name of the letter is the "long E" sound, pronounced. In most other languages, its name matches the letter's pronunciation in open syllables.

History

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 (and in foreign words); in Greek, hê became the letter epsilon, used to represent. The various forms of the Old Italic script and the Latin alphabet followed this usage.

Use in writing systems

English

Although Middle English spelling used ⟨e⟩ to represent long and short, the Great Vowel Shift changed long (as in me or bee) to while short (as in met or bed) remained a mid vowel. In unstressed syllables, this letter is usually pronounced either as or. 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, , , or some variation (such as a nasalized version) of these sounds, often with diacritics (as: ⟨e ê é è ë ē ĕ ě ẽ ė ẹ ę ẻ⟩) to indicate contrasts. Less commonly, as in French, German, or Saanich, ⟨e⟩ represents a mid-central vowel. Digraphs with ⟨e⟩ are common to indicate either diphthongs or monophthongs, such as ⟨ea⟩ or ⟨ee⟩ for or in English, ⟨ei⟩ for in German, and ⟨eu⟩ for in French or in German.

Other systems

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨e⟩ for the close-mid front unrounded vowel or the mid front unrounded vowel.

Frequency

E is the most common (or highest-frequency) letter in the English language alphabet and several other European languages, which has implications in both cryptography and data compression. This makes it a harder letter to use when writing lipograms.

Other uses

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

Other representations

Computing

Other

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.