Less commonly, as in French, German, or Saanich, ⟨e⟩ represents a mid-central vowel /ə/. In the orthography of many languages it represents either, ,, or some variation (such as a nasalized version) of these sounds, often with diacritics (as: ⟨e ê é è ë ē ĕ ě ẽ ė ẹ ę ẻ⟩) to indicate contrasts. In other cases, the letter is silent, generally at the end of words like queue. Pronunciation of the name of the letter ⟨e⟩ in European languages EnglishĪlthough Middle English spelling used ⟨e⟩ to represent long and short / e/, the Great Vowel Shift changed long /eː/ (as in 'me' or 'bee') to /iː/ while short / ɛ/ (as in 'met' or 'bed') remained a mid vowel. The various forms of the Old Italic script and the Latin alphabet followed this usage. In Semitic, the letter represented /h/ (and /e/ in foreign words) in Greek, hê became the letter epsilon, used to represent /e/. This in turn comes from the Semitic letter hê, which has been suggested to have started as a praying or calling human figure ( hillul 'jubilation'), and was most likely based on a similar Egyptian hieroglyph that indicated a different pronunciation. The Latin letter 'E' differs little from its source, the Greek letter epsilon, 'Ε'. 4.3 Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations.
4.2 Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets.4.1 Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet.