En (Н н; italics:
''Н н'') is a letter of the
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, ...
.
It commonly represents the
dental nasal
The voiced alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is ...
consonant , like the pronunciation of in "neat".
History
The Cyrillic letter En was derived from the
Greek letter Nu (Ν ν).
The name of En in the
Early Cyrillic alphabet
The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Slavic people living ...
was (''našĭ''), meaning "ours".
Form
The capital Cyrillic letter En
looks exactly the same as the capital
Latin letter H but, as with most Cyrillic letters, the lowercase form is simply a smaller version of the uppercase. Rather than from the
Greek letter Eta, from which Latin H originated, the Cyrillic letter En was derived from the
Greek letter Nu. By exception, the
Romanian Cyrillic alphabet
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language
Romanian (obsolete spellings: Rumanian or Roumanian; autonym: ''limba română'' , or ''românește ...
used N and ɴ, instead of Н and н. The confusion between the two characters forms part of the plot of the
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictiona ...
novel ''
Murder on the Orient Express
''Murder on the Orient Express'' is a work of detective fiction by English writer Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934. In the U ...
''.
Related letters and other similar characters
*Ν ν :
Greek letter Nu
*N n :
Latin letter N
*Њ њ :
Cyrillic letter Nje
*Η η :
Greek letter Eta
*H h :
Latin letter H
*ʜ :
Latin letter small capital H
Computing codes
External links
*
*{{Wiktionary-inline, н