Ñ
Encyclopedia
Ñ is a letter of the modern Latin alphabet
, formed by an N
with a diacritic
al tilde
. It is used in the Spanish alphabet, Galician alphabet, Asturian alphabet, Basque alphabet
, Aragonese old alphabet (Grafía de Uesca de 1987), Filipino alphabet, Chamorro alphabet
and the Guarani alphabet
, where it represents ɲ. It is also used in the Tatar
and Crimean Tatar
languages, where it represents ŋ. This also appears in Chamorro
, Mandinka
, Mapudungun, and Tocharian languages
Unlike many other alphabets that use diacritic marks (such as ü in Asturian
, Leonese
, Spanish
, and Galician
), Ñ is considered by these languages a letter in its own right, with its own name (eñe, pronounced "enye") and its own place in the alphabet (after N). From this point of view, its alphabetical independence is similar to the English W
(historically, W and Ñ come from a doubled V and a doubled N, respectively).
for the second "n", written over the first. For example, the Spanish word año (year) is derived from Latin
ANNVS. Other languages used the macron
over an "n" or "m" to indicate simple doubling.
Already in medieval Latin
palaeography, the sign that in Spanish came to be called virgulilla (tilde
) was used on a vowel to indicate a following nasal consonant (n or m) that had been omitted, as in tãtus for tantus or quã for quam. This usage was passed on to other languages using the Latin alphabet, although it was subsequently dropped by most. Spanish and Portuguese retained it though, in some specific cases. In Spanish in particular it was kept to indicate the palatal nasal
, the sound that is now spelt as "ñ". Another word for the Tilde is eñe (en-yeh) The tilde is referred to as an eñe by most of the Spanish speaking countries in Latin America. The word "tilde" came from the Spanish word "título", meaning "title" or "heading" in the English Language. In English the word "tilde" is often used, but it's commonly referred to as an eñe in Spanish.
From spellings of anno abbreviated as ãno, as explained above, the tilde was henceforth transferred on to the "n" and kept as a useful expedient to indicate the new palatal nasal sound that Spanish had developed in that position: año. The sign was also adopted for the same palatal nasal in all other cases, even when it did not derive from an original "nn", as for leña (from Latin "ligna") or señor (from Latin "senior").
The palatal nasal sound is roughly reminiscent of the English consonant cluster
/nj/ in "onion" ˈʌnjən. While this common description is enough to give a rough idea of the sound, it is not precise (it is analogous to giving the pronunciation of the English word "shot" as "syot"). A closer approximation is the ny in "canyon."
Other Romance languages
have different spellings for this phoneme
: Italian
and French
use "gn", a consonant cluster that had evolved to it from Latin also in Spanish (see leña above), whereas Portuguese
and Occitan ("nh") or Catalan
("ny") chose other digraphs with no etymological precedent.
When the Morse Code
was extended beyond English, a symbol was allotted for this character, though it is not used in English ( — — · — — ).
Although the letter "ñ" is used by other languages whose spellings were influenced by Spanish, it has recently been chosen to represent the identity of the Spanish language, especially as a result of the battle against its obliteration from computer keyboards by an English-led industry.
In Spanish and some other languages (Aymara
, Quechua, Mapudungún
, Guaraní
, Filipino, Basque
, Chamorro
, Galician
, Leonese
, and Tetum), whose orthographies have some basis in Spanish, it also represents the palatal nasal
. Other Romance languages have this sound as well, written "nh" in Portuguese
(espanhol
) and classical Occitan (espanhòu
); "gn" in Italian
(spagnolo
) and French
(espagnol
), and "ny" in Catalan
and Aragonese
(espanyol
). The accented letter ń
used in Polish
, and the symbol ň
used in Czech
and Slovak
are also equivalent to the Spanish letter "ñ". The same sound is written "ny" in Hungarian
.
It is also used to represent the velar nasal
sound when transliterating both Crimean Tatar
in Latin script.
In the Breton language
, it nasalises
the preceding vowel as in Jañ /ʒã/ which corresponds to the French name Jean and bears the same pronunciation.
It is used in a number of English words of Spanish origin, such as jalapeño
, piña colada
, piñata
, and El Niño
. The Spanish word cañón, however, became the English word canyon
. Until the middle of the 20th century, adapting it to "nn" was more common in English, as in the phrase "Battle of Corunna". Nowadays, it is almost always left alone.
In the orthography for languages of Senegal
, ñ represents the palatal nasal
. Senegal
is unique among countries of West Africa
in using this letter.
The Lule Sami language contains the letter ń
, which often has been written ñ on computers, since ñ but not ń was available on keyboards and the Latin-1 character set.
culture and its influence on the United States "Generation Ñ" and later started a magazine with that name. Organizations such as the Instituto Cervantes
and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists
have adopted the letter as their mark for Hispanic heritage.
In 1991, a European Community report recommended the repeal of a regulation preventing the sale in Spain
of computer products not supporting "all the characteristics of the Spanish writing system," claiming that it was a protectionist
measure against the principles of the free market. This would have allowed the distribution of keyboards without an "Ñ" key. The Real Academia Española
stated that the matter was a serious attack against the language. Nobel Prize winner in literature Gabriel García Márquez
expressed his disdain over the elimination of the eñe by saying: "The 'Ñ' is not an archaeological piece of junk, but just the opposite: a cultural leap of a Romance language that left the others behind in expressing with only one letter a sound that other languages continue to express with two."
Among other forms of controversy are those pertaining to the anglicization of Spanish surnames. Such personal decisions can be perceived by the Spanish community as denying identity and heritage. The replacement of "ñ" with another letter alters the pronunciation and meaning of a word or name, in the same manner as replacing any letter with a different one would. Peña
is a common Spanish surname and a common noun that means "rocky hill"; it is often anglicized into "Pena", changing the name into the Spanish word for "pity", often used in terms of sorrow.
When Federico Peña
was first running for mayor of Denver in 1983, the Denver Post printed his name without the tilde as "Pena." But after he won the election they began printing his name complete with tilde.
In Unicode
Ñ has code U+00D1 (decimal 209) and ñ has code U+00F1 (decimal 241). Additionally this letter can be generated using combining tilde
, , U+0303, decimal 771. In this way n or N followed by U+0303 become ñ or Ñ.
Ñ is a separate key in Spanish keyboard and Latin American keyboard (see the corresponding sections on keyboard layout
).
In HTML character entity reference the codes are
On Apple Macintosh operating systems (including Mac OS X
), it can be achieved by pressing and holding the Option key then typing "N", followed by typing either "N" or "n".
To make a lowercase ñ on the Microsoft Windows
operating system, hold down the Alt key and type the number 164 or 0241 on the numeric keypad (with Num Lock turned on). To make an uppercase Ñ, press Alt-165 or Alt-0209. Character Map
in Windows
identifies the letter as "Latin Small/Capital Letter N With Tilde".
In Microsoft Word
, a capital Ñ can be typed by pressing Control-Shift-Tilde (~), and then typing an "N".
And, in Linux
, it can be created by holding down Ctrl+Shift and typing 'u00D1' or 'u00F1'.
Another option (for any operating system) is to configure the system to use the US-International keyboard layout, where the ñ can be produced either by Alt Gr-N, or by typing the tilde (~) followed by the letter n.
s. An internationalized domain name
having ñ is translated using an algorithm called Punycode
, which replaces the ñ (and other non ASCII characters) by a string of letters and digits. For example ñandú.cl is translated to xn--and-6ma2c.cl.
(except for the domain name), Ñ may be replaced by %C3%91, and ñ by %C3%B1. This is not needed for newer browsers, since for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ñ (link to this article) can be written directly and encoded by the browser. The hex digits represent the UTF-8
encoding of the glyphs Ñ and ñ. This feature allows almost any Unicode
character to be encoded, and it is considered important to support non-English languages.
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, formed by an N
N
N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...
with a diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
al tilde
Tilde
The tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....
. It is used in the Spanish alphabet, Galician alphabet, Asturian alphabet, Basque alphabet
Basque alphabet
The Basque alphabet is a Latin-derived alphabet used to write the Basque language. It consists of 27 letters.- List of letters :The letters of the Basque alphabet are the 26 letters of the basic modern Latin alphabet plus the ñ .This is the whole list:-Digraphs:There are several digraphs The Basque...
, Aragonese old alphabet (Grafía de Uesca de 1987), Filipino alphabet, Chamorro alphabet
Chamorro language
Chamorro is a Malayo-Polynesian language, spoken on the Mariana Islands by about 47,000 people Chamorro (Chamorro: Fino' Chamoru or simply Chamoru) is a Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian) language, spoken on the Mariana Islands (Guam, Rota, Tinian, and Saipan) by about 47,000 people Chamorro...
and the Guarani alphabet
Guaraní language
Guaraní, specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guaraní , is an indigenous language of South America that belongs to the Tupí–Guaraní subfamily of the Tupian languages. It is one of the official languages of Paraguay , where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and half of...
, where it represents ɲ. It is also used in the Tatar
Tatar language
The Tatar language , or more specifically Kazan Tatar, is a Turkic language spoken by the Tatars of historical Kazan Khanate, including modern Tatarstan and Bashkiria...
and Crimean Tatar
Crimean Tatar language
The Crimean Tatar language is the language of the Crimean Tatars. It is a Turkic language spoken in Crimea, Central Asia , and the Crimean Tatar diasporas in Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria...
languages, where it represents ŋ. This also appears in Chamorro
Chamorro language
Chamorro is a Malayo-Polynesian language, spoken on the Mariana Islands by about 47,000 people Chamorro (Chamorro: Fino' Chamoru or simply Chamoru) is a Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian) language, spoken on the Mariana Islands (Guam, Rota, Tinian, and Saipan) by about 47,000 people Chamorro...
, Mandinka
Mandinka language
The Mandinka language is a Mandé language spoken by millions of Mandinka people in Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea-Bissau and Chad; it is the main language of The Gambia. It belongs to the Manding branch of Mandé, and is thus fairly...
, Mapudungun, and Tocharian languages
Tocharian languages
Tocharian or Tokharian is an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The name is taken from the people known to the Greeks as the Tocharians . These are sometimes identified with the Yuezhi and the Kushans. The term Tokharistan usually refers to 1st millennium Bactria, which the...
Unlike many other alphabets that use diacritic marks (such as ü in Asturian
Asturian language
Asturian is a Romance language of the West Iberian group, Astur-Leonese Subgroup, spoken in the Spanish Region of Asturias by the Asturian people...
, Leonese
Leonese language
The Leonese language is the endonym term used to refer to all vernacular Romance dialects of the Astur-Leonese linguistic group in the Spanish provinces of León and Zamora; Astur-Leonese also includes the dialects...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, and Galician
Galician language
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
), Ñ is considered by these languages a letter in its own right, with its own name (eñe, pronounced "enye") and its own place in the alphabet (after N). From this point of view, its alphabetical independence is similar to the English W
W
W is the 23rd letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.In other Germanic languages, including German, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V...
(historically, W and Ñ come from a doubled V and a doubled N, respectively).
History
Historically, "ñ" arose as a ligature of "nn": the tilde was shorthandShorthand
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed or brevity of writing as compared to a normal method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek stenos and graphē or graphie...
for the second "n", written over the first. For example, the Spanish word año (year) is derived from Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
ANNVS. Other languages used the macron
Macron
A macron, from the Greek , meaning "long", is a diacritic placed above a vowel . It was originally used to mark a long or heavy syllable in Greco-Roman metrics, but now marks a long vowel...
over an "n" or "m" to indicate simple doubling.
Already in medieval Latin
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...
palaeography, the sign that in Spanish came to be called virgulilla (tilde
Tilde
The tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....
) was used on a vowel to indicate a following nasal consonant (n or m) that had been omitted, as in tãtus for tantus or quã for quam. This usage was passed on to other languages using the Latin alphabet, although it was subsequently dropped by most. Spanish and Portuguese retained it though, in some specific cases. In Spanish in particular it was kept to indicate the palatal nasal
Palatal nasal
The palatal nasal is a type of consonant, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter n with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom of the left stem of the letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J...
, the sound that is now spelt as "ñ". Another word for the Tilde is eñe (en-yeh) The tilde is referred to as an eñe by most of the Spanish speaking countries in Latin America. The word "tilde" came from the Spanish word "título", meaning "title" or "heading" in the English Language. In English the word "tilde" is often used, but it's commonly referred to as an eñe in Spanish.
From spellings of anno abbreviated as ãno, as explained above, the tilde was henceforth transferred on to the "n" and kept as a useful expedient to indicate the new palatal nasal sound that Spanish had developed in that position: año. The sign was also adopted for the same palatal nasal in all other cases, even when it did not derive from an original "nn", as for leña (from Latin "ligna") or señor (from Latin "senior").
The palatal nasal sound is roughly reminiscent of the English consonant cluster
Consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
/nj/ in "onion" ˈʌnjən. While this common description is enough to give a rough idea of the sound, it is not precise (it is analogous to giving the pronunciation of the English word "shot" as "syot"). A closer approximation is the ny in "canyon."
Other Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
have different spellings for this phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
: Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
use "gn", a consonant cluster that had evolved to it from Latin also in Spanish (see leña above), whereas Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
and Occitan ("nh") or Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
("ny") chose other digraphs with no etymological precedent.
When the Morse Code
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
was extended beyond English, a symbol was allotted for this character, though it is not used in English ( — — · — — ).
Although the letter "ñ" is used by other languages whose spellings were influenced by Spanish, it has recently been chosen to represent the identity of the Spanish language, especially as a result of the battle against its obliteration from computer keyboards by an English-led industry.
Cross-linguistic usage
Aymara language
Aymara is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over three million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Peru and Bolivia...
, Quechua, Mapudungún
Mapudungun
The Mapuche language, Mapudungun is a language isolate spoken in south-central Chile and west central Argentina by the Mapuche people. It is also spelled Mapuzugun and sometimes called Mapudungu or Araucanian...
, Guaraní
Guaraní language
Guaraní, specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guaraní , is an indigenous language of South America that belongs to the Tupí–Guaraní subfamily of the Tupian languages. It is one of the official languages of Paraguay , where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and half of...
, Filipino, Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
, Chamorro
Chamorro language
Chamorro is a Malayo-Polynesian language, spoken on the Mariana Islands by about 47,000 people Chamorro (Chamorro: Fino' Chamoru or simply Chamoru) is a Malayo-Polynesian (Austronesian) language, spoken on the Mariana Islands (Guam, Rota, Tinian, and Saipan) by about 47,000 people Chamorro...
, Galician
Galician language
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
, Leonese
Leonese language
The Leonese language is the endonym term used to refer to all vernacular Romance dialects of the Astur-Leonese linguistic group in the Spanish provinces of León and Zamora; Astur-Leonese also includes the dialects...
, and Tetum), whose orthographies have some basis in Spanish, it also represents the palatal nasal
Palatal nasal
The palatal nasal is a type of consonant, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter n with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom of the left stem of the letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J...
. Other Romance languages have this sound as well, written "nh" in Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
(espanhol
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
) and classical Occitan (espanhòu
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
); "gn" in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
(spagnolo
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
) and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
(espagnol
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
), and "ny" in Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
and Aragonese
Aragonese language
Aragonese is a Romance language now spoken in a number of local varieties by between 10,000 and 30,000 people over the valleys of the Aragón River, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza in Aragon, Spain...
(espanyol
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
). The accented letter ń
N
N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...
used in Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, and the symbol ň
N
N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...
used in Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
and Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
are also equivalent to the Spanish letter "ñ". The same sound is written "ny" in Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
.
It is also used to represent the velar nasal
Velar nasal
The velar nasal is the sound of ng in English sing. It is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is N....
sound when transliterating both Crimean Tatar
Crimean Tatar language
The Crimean Tatar language is the language of the Crimean Tatars. It is a Turkic language spoken in Crimea, Central Asia , and the Crimean Tatar diasporas in Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria...
in Latin script.
In the Breton language
Breton language
Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...
, it nasalises
Nasal vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
the preceding vowel as in Jañ /ʒã/ which corresponds to the French name Jean and bears the same pronunciation.
It is used in a number of English words of Spanish origin, such as jalapeño
Jalapeño
The jalapeño is a medium-sized chili pepper that has a warm, burning sensation when eaten. A mature jalapeño fruit is 2–3½ inches long and is commonly picked and consumed while still green, but occasionally it is allowed to fully ripen and turn crimson red...
, piña colada
Piña Colada
The piña colada is a sweet, rum-based cocktail made with rum, cream of coconut, and pineapple juice, usually served either blended or shaken with ice. It may be garnished with a pineapple wedge or a maraschino cherry or both...
, piñata
Piñata
A piñata is a papier-mâché or other type of container that is decorated, filled with toys and or candy and then broken as part of a ceremony or celebration. Piñatas are most commonly associated with Mexico, but its origins are considered to be in China...
, and El Niño
El Niño-Southern Oscillation
El Niño/La Niña-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is a quasiperiodic climate pattern that occurs across the tropical Pacific Ocean roughly every five years...
. The Spanish word cañón, however, became the English word canyon
Canyon
A canyon or gorge is a deep ravine between cliffs often carved from the landscape by a river. Rivers have a natural tendency to reach a baseline elevation, which is the same elevation as the body of water it will eventually drain into. This forms a canyon. Most canyons were formed by a process of...
. Until the middle of the 20th century, adapting it to "nn" was more common in English, as in the phrase "Battle of Corunna". Nowadays, it is almost always left alone.
In the orthography for languages of Senegal
Languages of Senegal
Senegal is a multilingual country - Ethnologue lists 36 languagesFrench, which was inherited from the colonial era, is the official language of Senegal. It is used by the administration and understood by about 15% - 20% of all males and about 1%-2% of all women...
, ñ represents the palatal nasal
Palatal nasal
The palatal nasal is a type of consonant, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter n with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom of the left stem of the letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J...
. Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
is unique among countries of West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
in using this letter.
The Lule Sami language contains the letter ń
N
N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...
, which often has been written ñ on computers, since ñ but not ń was available on keyboards and the Latin-1 character set.
Cultural significance
The letter "Ñ" has come to represent the identity of the Spanish language. Latino publisher Bill Teck labeled HispanicHispanic
Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...
culture and its influence on the United States "Generation Ñ" and later started a magazine with that name. Organizations such as the Instituto Cervantes
Instituto Cervantes
The Cervantes Institute is a worldwide non-profit organization created by the Spanish government in 1991. It is named after Miguel de Cervantes , the author of Don Quixote and perhaps the most important figure in the history of Spanish literature...
and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists
National Association of Hispanic Journalists
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists is a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to the advancement of Hispanic journalists in the United States and Puerto Rico...
have adopted the letter as their mark for Hispanic heritage.
In 1991, a European Community report recommended the repeal of a regulation preventing the sale in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
of computer products not supporting "all the characteristics of the Spanish writing system," claiming that it was a protectionist
Protectionism
Protectionism is the economic policy of restraining trade between states through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and a variety of other government regulations designed to allow "fair competition" between imports and goods and services produced domestically.This...
measure against the principles of the free market. This would have allowed the distribution of keyboards without an "Ñ" key. The Real Academia Española
Real Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...
stated that the matter was a serious attack against the language. Nobel Prize winner in literature Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
expressed his disdain over the elimination of the eñe by saying: "The 'Ñ' is not an archaeological piece of junk, but just the opposite: a cultural leap of a Romance language that left the others behind in expressing with only one letter a sound that other languages continue to express with two."
Among other forms of controversy are those pertaining to the anglicization of Spanish surnames. Such personal decisions can be perceived by the Spanish community as denying identity and heritage. The replacement of "ñ" with another letter alters the pronunciation and meaning of a word or name, in the same manner as replacing any letter with a different one would. Peña
Peña
Peña, meaning "rocky outcrop" or "rocky summit" in the Spanish language , may refer to:-Mountains:*Peña Montañesa, a mountain in the Pre-Pyrenees, Aragon, Spain*Peña de los Enamorados, a mountain near Antequera, Andalusia, Spain...
is a common Spanish surname and a common noun that means "rocky hill"; it is often anglicized into "Pena", changing the name into the Spanish word for "pity", often used in terms of sorrow.
When Federico Peña
Federico Peña
Federico Fabian Peña is a former United States Secretary of Transportation from 1993 to 1997 and United States Secretary of Energy from 1997 to 1998, during the presidency of Bill Clinton....
was first running for mayor of Denver in 1983, the Denver Post printed his name without the tilde as "Pena." But after he won the election they began printing his name complete with tilde.
Computer usage
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
Ñ has code U+00D1 (decimal 209) and ñ has code U+00F1 (decimal 241). Additionally this letter can be generated using combining tilde
Tilde
The tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....
, , U+0303, decimal 771. In this way n or N followed by U+0303 become ñ or Ñ.
Ñ is a separate key in Spanish keyboard and Latin American keyboard (see the corresponding sections on keyboard layout
Keyboard layout
A keyboard layout is any specific mechanical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key–meaning associations of a computer, typewriter, or other typographic keyboard....
).
In HTML character entity reference the codes are
Ñ and ñ or Ñ and ñ.On Apple Macintosh operating systems (including Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
), it can be achieved by pressing and holding the Option key then typing "N", followed by typing either "N" or "n".
To make a lowercase ñ on the Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating system, hold down the Alt key and type the number 164 or 0241 on the numeric keypad (with Num Lock turned on). To make an uppercase Ñ, press Alt-165 or Alt-0209. Character Map
Character Map
Character Map is a utility included with Microsoft Windows operating systems and is used to view the characters in any installed font, to check what keyboard input is used to enter those characters, and to copy characters to the clipboard in lieu of typing them. The tool is usually useful for...
in Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
identifies the letter as "Latin Small/Capital Letter N With Tilde".
In Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
, a capital Ñ can be typed by pressing Control-Shift-Tilde (~), and then typing an "N".
And, in Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, it can be created by holding down Ctrl+Shift and typing 'u00D1' or 'u00F1'.
Another option (for any operating system) is to configure the system to use the US-International keyboard layout, where the ñ can be produced either by Alt Gr-N, or by typing the tilde (~) followed by the letter n.
Integration with domain names
From late 2001, the letter ñ was accepted as a character usable in domain nameDomain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
s. An internationalized domain name
Internationalized domain name
An internationalized domain name is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label that is displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in a language-specific script or alphabet, such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi or the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacritics,...
having ñ is translated using an algorithm called Punycode
Punycode
In computing, Punycode is an instance of a general encoding syntax by which a string of Unicode characters is transformed uniquely and reversibly into a smaller, restricted character set....
, which replaces the ñ (and other non ASCII characters) by a string of letters and digits. For example ñandú.cl is translated to xn--and-6ma2c.cl.
Use in URLs
In URLsUniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
(except for the domain name), Ñ may be replaced by %C3%91, and ñ by %C3%B1. This is not needed for newer browsers, since for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ñ (link to this article) can be written directly and encoded by the browser. The hex digits represent the UTF-8
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...
encoding of the glyphs Ñ and ñ. This feature allows almost any Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
character to be encoded, and it is considered important to support non-English languages.
See also
- TildeTildeThe tilde is a grapheme with several uses. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulus meaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics....
- Wiktionary's list of English words with diacritics
Other symbols for the palatal nasal
- Gn (digraph)
- Nh (digraph)Nh (digraph)Nh is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, a combination of N and H. Together with lh and the interpunct, it was a typical feature of Old Occitan, the language used by medieval troubadours.-African languages:...
- Nj (letter)
- Ny (digraph)
- Ɲ
- ŃNN is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...
- Ң
- ꞐꞐN with descender is a letter of the Latin alphabet, used in several Uniform Turkic Alphabet orthographies in 1930s , as well as in the 1990s orthographies invented in attempts to restore the Latin alphabet for the Tatar language and the Chechen language.In the majority of languages this letter...
- Њ
- ŇNN is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet...
- ɲ (IPA symbol)Palatal nasalThe palatal nasal is a type of consonant, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter n with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom of the left stem of the letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J...