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 inopen syllables.
Pronunciation of the name of the letter⟨e⟩ in European languages
The Latin letter 'E' differs little from its source, theGreek letterepsilon, 'Ε'. This in turn comes from theSemitic letterhê, which has been suggested to have started as a praying or calling human figure (hillul, 'jubilation'), and was most likely based on a similarEgyptian hieroglyph that indicated a different pronunciation.
In Semitic, the letter represented/h/ (and/e/ in foreign words); in Greek,hê became the letterepsilon, used to represent/e/. The various forms of theOld Italic script and theLatin alphabet followed this usage.
AlthoughMiddle English spelling used⟨e⟩ to represent long and short/e/, theGreat Vowel Shift changed long/eː/ (as inme orbee) to/iː/ while short/ɛ/ (as inmet orbed) remained amid vowel. In unstressed syllables, this letter is usually pronounced either as/ɪ/ or/ə/. In other cases, the letter issilent, generally at the end of words likequeue.
Other languages
In the orthography of many languages, it represents either[e],[e̞],[ɛ], or some variation (such as anasalized version) of these sounds, often with diacritics (as:⟨eêéèëēĕěẽėẹęẻ⟩) to indicate contrasts. Less commonly, as in French, German, orSaanich,⟨e⟩ represents amid-central vowel/ə/.Digraphs with⟨e⟩ are common to indicate eitherdiphthongs ormonophthongs, such as⟨ea⟩ or⟨ee⟩ for/iː/ or/eɪ/ in English,⟨ei⟩ for/aɪ/ inGerman, and⟨eu⟩ for/ø/ inFrench or/ɔɪ/ in German.
Theumlaut 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)
InBritish 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)
