Latin epsilon or open E (majuscule: Ɛ, minuscule: ɛ) is a letter of the extended

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

, based on the

lowercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...

of the Greek letter

epsilon Epsilon (, ; uppercase , lowercase or ; ) is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet, corresponding phonetically to a mid front unrounded vowel or . In the system of Greek numerals it also has the value five. It was derived from the Phoenic ...

(ε). It was introduced in the 16th century by

Gian Giorgio Trissino Gian Giorgio Trissino (8 July 1478 – 8 December 1550), also called Giovan Giorgio Trissino and self-styled as Giovan Giωrgio Trissino, was a Venetian Renaissance humanist, poet, dramatist, diplomat, grammarian, linguist, and philosopher. ...

to represent the pronunciation of the "open e" (the letter e pronounced as the

open-mid front unrounded vowel The open-mid front unrounded vowel, or low-mid front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some Speech communication, spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is the Latin epsil ...

) in the

Italian language Italian (, , or , ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. It evolved from the colloquial Latin of the Roman Empire. Italian is the least divergent language from Latin, together with Sardinian language, Sardinian. It is ...

; this use of the letter has since become the standard in IPA notation . Since the 20th century, the letter also occurs in the orthographies of many Niger–Congo and

Nilo-Saharan The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributari ...

languages, such as Ewe, Akan,

Lingala Lingala (or Ngala, Lingala: ) is a Bantu languages, Bantu language spoken in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern half of the Republic of the Congo, in their capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and to a lesser de ...

, Dinka and Maasai, for the vowel or , and is included in the

African reference alphabet The African Reference Alphabet is a largely defunct continent-wide guideline for the creation of Latin alphabets for African languages. Two variants of the initial proposal (one in English and a second in French) were made at a 1978 UNESCO-organi ...

. In the

Berber Latin alphabet The Berber Latin alphabet () is the version of the Latin alphabet used to write the Berber languages. It was adopted in the 19th century, using a variety of letters. History The Berber languages were originally written using the ancient ''Libyco- ...

used in Algerian Berber school books, and before that proposed by the French institute INALCO, it represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative . Some authors use ƹayin instead; both letters are similar in shape with the Arabic ʿayn .

Use in phonetic alphabets

The

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

(IPA) uses various forms of the Latin epsilon: * represents the

* represents the rhotacized open-mid central vowel * represents the

open-mid central rounded vowel The open-mid central rounded vowel, or low-mid central rounded vowel, is a vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 3\. ...

(shown as on the 1993 IPA chart) The

Uralic Phonetic Alphabet Finno-Ugric transcription (FUT) or the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nesto ...

uses various forms of the Latin epsilon: * * *

List of languages that use Latin epsilon

Niger-Congo

Akan, Bambara, Baule,

Dagbani Dagbani (or Dagbane), also known as Dagbanli or Dagbanle, is a Gur language spoken in Ghana and Northern Togo. Its native speakers are estimated around 1,170,000. Dagbani is the most widely spoken language in northern Ghana, specifically among ...

, Dogon,

Douala Douala is the largest city in Cameroon and its economic capital. It is also the capital of Cameroon's Littoral Region (Cameroon), Littoral Region. It was home to Central Africa's largest port, now being replaced by Kribi port. It has the country ...

. Ewe, Fante, Frafra, Fon, Ga, Jula, Kabiye, Kpelle, Kuya,

, Loma, Mende, Moore, Soninke, Twi, Vai, Yoruba (in Benin)

Nilo-Saharan

Dinka, Maasai, Nuer, Songhai, Zarma.

Unicode

Latin epsilon is called "Open E" in Unicode.

References