Ane o the maist commonhieroglyphs,snake, wis uised inEgyptian writin tae staund for a soond lik the Inglish ⟨J⟩, acause the Egyptian wird for "snake" wisdjet. It is speculatit bi mony thatSemitic fowk wirkin in Egyp adaptit hieroglyphics tae creaut the firstalphabet, an that thay uised the same snake seembol tae represent N, acause thair wird for "snake" mey hae begun wi that soond. Houiver, the name for the letter in thePhoenician,Ebreu,Aramaic anArabic alphabets isnun, which means "fish" in some o thir leids. The soond value o the letter wis/n/—as inGreek,Etruscan,Latin an aw modren leids.
Egyptian hieroglyph
for J | Phoenician
Nun | Etruscan
N | Greek
Nu |
|---|
|  |  |  |
N represents adental oralveolar nasal in virtually aw leids that uise the Latin alphabet, an in theInternaitional Phonetic Alphabet. A commondigraph wi 'n' is 'ng', which represents avelar nasal in a variety o leids, uisually poseetioned wird-finally inInglis. Eften, afore avelar plosive (as inink orjungle), 'n' alane represents a velar nasal. In Italian an French, 'gn' represents apalatal nasal (/ɲ/). ThePortuguese anVietnamese spellin for this soond is 'nh', while Spainyie an a few ither leids uise the letter 'ñ'. In Inglis, 'n' is generally silent when it is precedit bi an 'm' at the end o wirds, as inhymn; houiver, 'n' is pronoonced in this combination when occurring wird medially, as inhymnal.
'n' is the saxt maistcommon letter an the seicont-maist commonly uisedconsonant in theInglis leid (efter 't').
Inmathematics, the italic form (n) is the common seembol for avariable quantity, especially ane which represents aninteger.
is eften uised tae refer tae the set onatural nummers.
Instatistics, the italic fairm (n) is uised tae denote the nummer o observations or replicates includit in astatistical sample.
Inchemistry, N represents the elementNitrogen. Inbiochemistry, N is the ane-letter code seembol for theamino acidasparagine. It is an aa the seembol for theSI unit oforce, thenewton.
