ßIn German orthography, the letter ß (lowercase), called Eszett (ɛsˈtsɛt) and scharfes S (ˌʃaʁfəs ˈʔɛs, "sharp S"), represents the s phoneme in Standard German when following long vowels and diphthongs. The letter-name Eszett combines the names of the letters of (Es) and (Zett) in German. The character's Unicode names in English are sharp s and eszett. The Eszett letter is used only in German, and can be typographically replaced with the double-s digraph , if the ß-character is unavailable.
Insular GInsular G (majuscule: Ᵹ, minuscule: ᵹ) is a form of the letter g somewhat resembling an ezh, used in the medieval insular script of Great Britain and Ireland. It was first used in the Roman Empire in Roman cursive, then it appeared in Irish half uncial (insular) script, and after it had passed into Old English, it developed into the Middle English letter yogh (Ȝ ȝ). Middle English, having reborrowed the familiar Carolingian g from the Continent, began to use the two forms of g as separate letters.
NN, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is en (pronounced 'ɛn), plural ens. One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like the English , because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet. It is speculated by many that Semitic speakers 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.
Ch (digraph)Ch is a digraph in the Latin script. It is treated as a letter of its own in Chamorro, Old Spanish, Czech, Slovak, Igbo, Uzbek, Quechua, Guarani, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Ukrainian Latynka and Belarusian Łacinka alphabets. Formerly ch was also considered a separate letter for collation purposes in Modern Spanish, Vietnamese, and sometimes in Polish; now the digraph ch in these languages continues to be used, but it is considered as a sequence of letters and sorted as such. The digraph was first used in Latin since the 2nd century B.
Turkmen languageTurkmen (türkmençe, түркменче, تۆرکمنچه, tʏɾkmøntʃø or türkmen dili, түркмен дили, تۆرکمن ديلی, tʏɾkmøn dɪlɪ), sometimes referred to as "Turkmen Turkic" or "Turkmen Turkish", is a Turkic language spoken by the Turkmens of Central Asia. It has an estimated 5 million native speakers in Turkmenistan (where it is the official language), and a further 719,000 speakers in northeastern Iran and 1.5 million people in northwestern Afghanistan, where it has no official status.
TransliterationTransliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus trans- + liter-) in predictable ways, such as Greek → , Cyrillic → , Greek → the digraph , Armenian → or Latin → . For instance, for the Modern Greek term "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία", which is usually translated as "Hellenic Republic", the usual transliteration to Latin script is , and the name for Russia in Cyrillic script, "Россия", is usually transliterated as .
VV, or v, is the twenty-second letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is vee (pronounced 'viː), plural vees. The letter V ultimately comes from the Phoenician letter waw by way of U. During the Late Middle Ages, two minuscule glyphs of U developed which were both used for sounds including /u/ and modern /v/. The pointed form "v" was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form "u" was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound.
XX, or x, is the 24th and third-to-last letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is "ex" (pronounced 'ɛks), plural exes. In Ancient Greek, 'Χ' and 'Ψ' were among several variants of the same letter, used originally for /kh/ and later, in western areas such as Arcadia, as a simplification of the digraph 'ΧΣ' for /ks/.
ZZ, or z, is the 26th and last letter of the Latin alphabet, as used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual names in English are zed ('zɛd) and zee ('ziː), with an occasional archaic variant izzard ('ɪzərd). In most English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom, the letter's name is zed zɛd, reflecting its derivation from the Greek letter zeta (this dates to Latin, which borrowed Y and Z from Greek), but in American English its name is zee ziː, analogous to the names for B, C, D, etc.
Letter (alphabet)A letter is a segmental symbol of a phonemic writing system. The inventory of all letters forms an alphabet. Letters broadly correspond to phonemes in the spoken form of the language, although there is rarely a consistent and exact correspondence between letters and phonemes. The word letter, borrowed from Old French letre, entered Middle English around 1200 AD, eventually displacing the Old English term bōcstæf (bookstaff). Letter is descended from the Latin littera, which may have descended from the Greek "διφθέρα" (, writing tablet), via Etruscan.
