N
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The letter N is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is en /ɛn/.
It is often used as a variable in algebra. I used to eat n's
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[edit] History of the form
The most common snake hieroglyphic was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English 'J', because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet. It is speculated that Semitic people working in Egypt adapted hieroglyphics to create the first alphabet, and that they used the same snake symbol to represent N, because their word for "snake" may have begun with that sound. However, the name for the letter in the Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic alphabets is nun, which means "fish" in some of these languages. The sound value of the letter was /n/ - as in Greek, Etruscan, Latin and all modern languages.
| Egyptian hieroglyph for 'J' | Proto-Semitic N | Phoenician N | Etruscan N | Greek Nu | ||
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[edit] Usage
N serves as a dental or alveolar nasal in virtually all languages that use the Latin alphabet. A common digraph with <n> is <ng>, which produces a velar nasal in a variety of languages, usually final in English. In languages like Italian and French, <gn> represents a palatal nasal (/ɲ/). The Portuguese spelling for this sound is <nh>. In English, n is silent when it is preceded by an m, in words like hymn (although it is pronounced in words such as damnation).
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the lowercase [n] represents the alveolar nasal sound. A small capital [ɴ] represents the uvular nasal.
N is the second-most commonly used consonant in the English language (after T).
[edit] Codes for computing
| NATO phonetic | Morse code | ||
| November | |||
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| Signal flag | Semaphore | ASL Manual | Braille |
In Unicode the capital N is codepoint U+004E and the lowercase n is U+006E.
The ASCII code for capital N is 78 and for lowercase n is 110; or in binary 01001110 and 01101110, correspondingly.
The EBCDIC code for capital N is 213 and for lowercase n is 149.
The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "N" and "n" for upper and lower case respectively.
[edit] Meanings of N
- In astronomy,
- N stands for a reddish class of stars** N stands for the planet Neptune; for example, S/2002 N 4 is the fourth satellite of Neptune sighted in 2002.
- N stands for a July 1 through 15 discovery, in the provisional designation of a comet (e.g. C/1825 N1, Comet Pons) or asteroid (e.g. (5387) 1980 NB).
- In aviation,
- N is the first letter on aircraft, as administered by the International Civil Aviation Organization, that are registered in the United States
- In biochemistry, N is the symbol for asparagine
- In calendars, N is often an abbreviation for the month November
- In chemistry,
- N is the symbol for Nitrogen.
- N can denote a measure of purity, referring to the number of nines after the comma. So a substance of purity 3N is 0.999 (99.9%) pure, while a substance of purity 6N is 0.999999 (99.9999%) pure.
- n can be used to denote number of moles.
- N can be used to denote Normality, a measure of concentration
- In computer science and set theory, n is frequently used as a generic counting number
- in chess, N is a notation symbol for the knight piece, as the letter K is used for the king.
- In driving a motor vehicle, N designates the neutral gear of a transmission
- In electronics, N stands for a type of RF connector
- In speech The "N" word is sometimes a politically correct replacement for the much more offensive word for a black person.
- In finance, N is the U.S. ticker symbol for Inco Limited
- In Japanese, N is a romanization of the kana ん and ン.
- In international licence plate codes, N stands for Norway
- In mathematics
- n can denote "number of" in algebraic equations.
- blackboard bold
represents the set of all natural numbers. - In the 1995 Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (a printed predecessor to the OEIS) sequences were numbered by lexicographic order prefixed by the letter N. Some older mathematical papers use these N numbers.
- In the metric system,
- N is the symbol for the newton, the SI derived unit for force (physics)
- n, nano, is the SI prefix meaning 10−9
- In music
- N¯ denotes the start of the Nebenstimme in Second Viennese School scores
- In Microsoft Windows, Ctrl-N, and Mac OS X, Command-N, creates a new document, a new window or a new folder.
- In particle physics,
- In physics,
- n is the recommended symbol for: refractive index (optics), principal quantum number (atomic and nuclear physics), order of reflexion, electron number density (solid state physics), amount of substance (chemical physics)
- N is the recommended symbol for: number of molecules (molecular physics), number of turns (electricity and magnetism), neutron number (atomic and nuclear physics), quantum number of total angular momentum (molecular spectroscopy)
- N is the center of a face of the Brillouin zone of a body-centered cubic lattice.
- As the first letter of a postal code,
- In Canada, N stands for Western Ontario.
- In the United Kingdom, N stands for North London.
- In bus routes numbers in London it indicates a night service and prefixes the number of the day route (though there may be small route differnces), which generally runs from about 23:00 to 06:00 the next day. Some 24 hour routes do not use the N prefix at night.
- In radio communication, N is one of the ITU prefixes allocated to the United States. Call signs beginning with N are generally used by U.S. Navy radio stations, as well as civilian aircraft.
- In Roman numerals, N was used around 725 by Bede, or one of his colleagues, as the initial of nullae (i.e., none or zero) in a table of epacts.
- In route numbering, N may be used as a prefix,
- In the Republic of Ireland, standing for a National Primary Route or National Secondary Route.
- In South Africa, standing for a national road.
- In statistics, n is the size of a sample.
- In video games, N is the abbreviation for Nintendo ("The Big 'N'"). Also the Nintendo 64 logo is a three-dimensional "N".
- N is also the name of a Macromedia Flash game.
- In weather forecasting and geography, N stands for north, one of the 4 cardinal directions.
- When displayed on the back of a vehicle in British Columbia, N means a novice driver.
- 'n is used informally in the English language as an abbreviation for the word, "and" (ie: "Jerry 'n Carl" = "Jerry and Carl").
[edit] See also
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