Latin epsilon or open E (majuscule: Ɛ, minuscule: ɛ) is a letter of the extended Latin alphabet, based on the lowercase of the Greek letter epsilon (ε). It was introduced in the 16th century by Gian Giorgio Trissino[1] to represent the pronunciation of the "open e" (the letter e pronounced as the open-mid front unrounded vowel) in the Italian language; this use of the letter has since become the standard in IPA notation[1] ( ). Since the 20th century, the letter also occurs in the orthographies of many Niger–Congo and Nilo-Saharan languages, such as Ewe, Akan, Lingala, Dinka and Maasai, for the vowel [ɛ] or [e̙], and is included in the African reference alphabet.
Ɛ | |||
---|---|---|---|
Ɛ ɛ | |||
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Usage | |||
Writing system | Latin script | ||
Type | Alphabetic and Logographic | ||
Sound values | |||
In Unicode | U+0190, U+025B | ||
History | |||
Development |
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Other | |||
Writing direction | Left-to-Right | ||
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Book_of_Mormon_-_Fante.jpg/220px-Book_of_Mormon_-_Fante.jpg)
In the Berber Latin alphabet used in Algerian Berber school books,[2] and before that proposed by the French institute INALCO, it represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative [ʕ]. Some authors use ƹayin ⟨ƹ⟩ instead;[citation needed] both letters are similar in shape with the Arabic ʿayn ⟨ع⟩.
Use in phonetic alphabets
editThe International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) uses various forms of the Latin epsilon:
- U+025B ɛ LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN E represents the open-mid front unrounded vowel
- U+025D ɝ LATIN SMALL LETTER REVERSED OPEN E WITH HOOK represents the rhotacized open-mid central vowel
- U+025E ɞ LATIN SMALL LETTER CLOSED REVERSED OPEN E represents the open-mid central rounded vowel (shown as U+029A ʚ LATIN SMALL LETTER CLOSED OPEN E on the 1993 IPA chart)
The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses various forms of the Latin epsilon:[3]
- U+1D08 ᴈ LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED OPEN E
- U+1D4B ᵋ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL OPEN E
- U+1D4C ᵌ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED OPEN E
List of languages that use Latin epsilon
editNiger-Congo
editAkan, Bambara, Baule, Dagbani, Dogon, Douala. Ewe, Fante, Frafra, Fon, Ga, Jula, Kabiye, Kpelle, Kuya, Lingala, Loma, Mende, Moore, Soninke, Twi, Vai.
Nilo-Saharan
editUnicode
editLatin epsilon is called "Open E" in Unicode.[4]
Preview | Ɛ | ɛ | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER OPEN E | LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN E | ||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 400 | U+0190 | 603 | U+025B |
UTF-8 | 198 144 | C6 90 | 201 155 | C9 9B |
Numeric character reference | Ɛ |
Ɛ |
ɛ |
ɛ |
See also
edit- Open O
- Writing systems of Africa (section on Latin script)
- Open-mid front unrounded vowel
- Greek Epsilon
- Reversed Ze Ԑ (Cyrillic script)
References
edit- ^ a b Concise History of the Language Sciences. 2014. p. 154.
- ^ "Tamazight-Dzayer". Archived from the original on 2020-11-21.
- ^ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Asmus Freytag; Rick McGowan; Ken Whistler (2006-05-08). "Unicode Technical Note #27: Known Anomalies in Unicode Character Names". The Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 2009-02-24.
This is actually a Latin epsilon and should have been so called.