Ñ: Encyclopedia - Ñ

Ñ

Ñ or enye, (Spanish eñe) represents a palatal nasal (IPA: /ɲ/). This is reminiscent of /nj/ as in "onion" IPA: /'ʌnjən/. It is the fifteenth letter of the Spanish alphabet, alphabetized between N and O. Though English keyboard schemes classify it as an N with a tilde, it is a separate letter in the Spanish alphabet.

Historically, ñ represented two N's: "nn": the tilde over the n was shorthand for the second n, as in the Portuguese nasal vowels. For example, the Spanish word año (year) is derived from Latin ANNVS.

Being a typically Spanish letter, it is sometimes used as a symbol of the Spanish language. For example, the Instituto Cervantes has incorporated the letter into its logo.

In Spanish and some other languages (for example Aragonese, Aymara, Quechua, Guaraní, Tagalog, Basque, Galician) whose orthographies were created under Spanish influence, it represents a voiced palatal nasal. It may also roughly be represented or pronounced as ny, e.g. piñata → pinyata; occasionally, when writing Spanish from an English keyboard, people replace the "ñ" with "ni": "año" and "niño", for instance, become "anio" and "ninio". Other Romance languages have this sound as well, expressed by nh in Portuguese and Occitan, ny in Catalan (considered a single letter, called enya), and gn (like lasagna and cognac) in Italian and French, respectively.

It is used in a number of English words of Spanish origin, such as jalapeño, Piña Colada, and piñata, though these are often spelled in English with an n instead, due to the absence of the ñ from the English alphabet. The Spanish word cañón, however, became the English word canyon. Many people from Spanish-speaking countries who have emigrated to English-speaking countries, such as Carlos Castaneda, have also anglicized their names by changing ñ into n. Until the middle of the 20th century, nn was more common in English, as in the "Battle of Corunna".

The letter Ñ is also used when writing the Tatar language in Latin script or Crimean Tatar language for ng sound.

ñ is also used in the Breton language where it nasalises the preceding vowel as in Jañ [ɟã] which corresponds to the French name Jean and bears the same pronunciation.

To make a lowercase ñ on the english keyboard, hold down the ALT key and press the numbers 0241 (or 164, not with the leading zero) on the numeric keypad with Num Lock ON. To make an uppercase Ñ, press ALT + numbers 165 on the numeric keypad with Num Lock ON.

See also

• List of English words with diacritics

Categories: Diacritics | Uncommon Latin letters

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Ñ", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki