E
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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E, or e, is the fifth letter and the second vowel letter in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its name in English is e (pronounced Template:IPAc-en); plural ees, Es or E's.
History
The Latin letter 'E' differs little from its source, the Greek letter epsilon, 'Ε'. 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. In Semitic, the letter represented Template:IPA (and Template:IPA in foreign words); in Greek, hê became the letter epsilon, used to represent Template:IPA. The various forms of the Old Italic script and the Latin alphabet followed this usage.
