M, or m, is the thirteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is em (pronounced /ˈɛm/), plural ems.[1]
M | |
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M m | |
Usage | |
Writing system | Latin script |
Type | Alphabetic and Logographic |
Language of origin | Latin language |
Phonetic usage | [m] [ɱ] [n] [n̼] /ɛm/ |
Unicode codepoint | U+004D, U+006D |
Alphabetical position | 13 Numerical value: 1000 |
History | |
Development | |
Time period | ~-700 to present |
Descendants | • ₥ • ™ • ℠ • ᴟ • ꬺ • ꟽ ɯ ɰ • ꟿ • ᛗ |
Sisters | М Ӎ מ ם م ܡ מּ ﬦ Ⰿ ࠌ 𐌼 |
Other | |
Other letters commonly used with | m(x) |
Associated numbers | 1000 |
Writing direction | Left-to-Right |
Egyptian hieroglyph "n" |
Phoenician Mem |
Western Greek Mu |
Etruscan M |
Latin M | ||
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The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu (Μ, μ). Semitic Mem is most likely derived from a "Proto-Sinaitic" (Bronze Age) adoption of the "water" ideogram in Egyptian writing. The Egyptian sign had the acrophonic value /n/, from the Egyptian word for "water", nt; the adoption as the Semitic letter for /m/ was presumably also on acrophonic grounds, from the Semitic word for "water", *mā(y)-.[2]
Orthography | Phonemes |
---|---|
Standard Chinese (Pinyin) | /m/ |
English | /m/, silent |
French | /m/ |
German | /m/ |
Portuguese | /m/, silent |
Spanish | /m/ |
Turkish | /m/ |
In English, ⟨m⟩ represents the voiced bilabial nasal /m/.
The Oxford English Dictionary (first edition) says that ⟨m⟩ is sometimes a vowel, in words like spasm and in the suffix -ism. In modern terminology, this is described as a syllabic consonant (IPA /m̩/).
M is the fourteenth most frequently used letter in the English language.
The letter ⟨m⟩ represents the voiced bilabial nasal /m/ in the orthography of Latin as well as in those of many modern languages.
In Washo, lower-case ⟨m⟩ represents a voiced bilabial nasal /m/, while upper-case ⟨M⟩ represents a voiceless bilabial nasal /m̥/.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨m⟩ represents the voiced bilabial nasal /m/.
Preview | M | m | M | m | ||||
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Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M | LATIN SMALL LETTER M | FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M | FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER M | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 77 | U+004D | 109 | U+006D | 65325 | U+FF2D | 65357 | U+FF4D |
UTF-8 | 77 | 4D | 109 | 6D | 239 188 173 | EF BC AD | 239 189 141 | EF BD 8D |
Numeric character reference | M |
M |
m |
m |
M |
M |
m |
m |
EBCDIC family | 212 | D4 | 148 | 94 | ||||
ASCII 1 | 77 | 4D | 109 | 6D |
roman numerals.