M
M
ISO basic Laitin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg
Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn
Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu
Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

Cursive script 'm' and capital 'M' in the U.S. D'Nealian script style

M (named em /ˈɛm/)[1] is the thirteent letter o the ISO basic Latin alphabet.

History

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The letter M is derived frae the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu (Μ, μ). Semitic Mem probably oreeginally pictured watter. It is kent that Semitic fowk workin in Egyp c. 2000 BC borrowed a hieroglyph for "watter" that wis first uised for an alveolar nasal (/n/), acause o the Egyptian wird for watter, n-t. This same seembol acame uised for /m/ in Semitic, acause the wird for watter began wi that soond.

Egyptian hieroglyph "N" Phoenician
Mem
Etruscan M Greek
Mu
Roman M
n
       

The letter 'm' represents the bilabial consonant soond, [m], in Classical leids as well as the modren leids. The Oxford Inglis Dictionary (first edeetion) says that 'm' is whiles a vowel in wirds lik spasm an in the suffix -ism. In modren terminology, this wad be describit as a syllabic consonant — IPA [m̩].

Relatit letters an ither similar characters

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Computin codes

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Character M m
Unicode name LATIN CAIPITAL LETTER M     LATIN SMAA LETTER M
Encodins decimal hex decimal hex
Unicode 77 U+004D 109 U+006D
UTF-8 77 4D 109 6D
Numeric chairacter reference M M m m
EBCDIC faimily 212 D4 148 94
ASCII 1 77 4D 109 6D
1 An aa for encodings based on ASCII, includin the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 an Macintosh faimilies o encodins.

Ither representations

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References

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  1. "M" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "em," op. cit.

Freemit airtins

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  •   Media relatit tae M at Wikimedia Commons
  •   The dictionar defineetion o M at Wiktionary
  •   The dictionar defineetion o m at Wiktionary


The ISO basic Laitin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz
Letter M with diacritics
Ḿḿ Ṁṁ Ṃṃ Ɱɱ
Related