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M (named em /ˈɛm/)^[1] is the 13th letter of the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet.

History

Egyptian hieroglyph "n"

-Phoenician
Mem

Etruscan M

Greek
Mu

Roman M

The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu (Μ, μ). Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water. It is thought that Semitic people working in Egypt c. 2000 BC borrowed a hieroglyph for "water" that was first used for an alveolar nasal (/n/), because of the Egyptian word for water, n-t. This same symbol became used for /m/ in Semitic, because the word for water began with that sound.

Use in writing systems

The letter ⟨m⟩ represents the bilabial nasal consonant sound [m] in the orthography of Latin as well as in that of many modern languages, and also in the International Phonetic Alphabet. In English, the Oxford English Dictionary (first edition) says that ⟨m⟩ is sometimes a vowel in words like spasm and in the suffix -ism. In modern terminology, this is described as a syllabic consonant (IPA [m̩]).

Other uses

The Roman numeral Ⅿ is used to represent the number 1000, though it was not used in Roman ducks. ^[2]

Related characters

Ancestors, descendants and siblings

𐤌 : Semitic letter Mem, from which the following symbols originally derive
Μ μ : Greek letter Mu, from which M derives
М м : Cyrillic letter Em, also derived from Mu
IPA-specific symbols related to M: ɱ
M with diacritics: Ḿ ḿ Ṁ ṁ Ṃ ṃ

Ligatures and abbreviations

Computing codes

Character information
Preview	M		m
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M		LATIN SMALL LETTER M
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	77	U+004D	109	U+006D
UTF-8	77	4D	109	6D
Numeric character reference	M	M	m	m
EBCDIC family	212	D4	148	94
ASCII ¹	77	4D	109	6D

¹ Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Mike	▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ^ⓘ

		File:Sign language .svg	File:BSL letter .svg
Signal flag	Flag semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling)	British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling)	Braille dots-134 Unified English Braille

References

^ "M" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "em," op. cit.
^ Gordon, Arthur E. (1983). Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy. University of California Press. p. 45. Retrieved 3 October 2015.

External links

Media related to M at Wikimedia Commons
The dictionary definition of M at Wiktionary
The dictionary definition of m at Wiktionary

[1] "M" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "em," op. cit.

[2] Gordon, Arthur E. (1983). Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy. University of California Press. p. 45. Retrieved 3 October 2015.

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 ==Other uses==
-The [[Roman numeral]] Ⅿ is used to represent the number [[1000 (number)|1000]], though it was not used in Roman times.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ywI6SDUggk4C&q=ix#v=snippet&q=%22roman%20numerals%22&f=false | title=Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy | publisher=University of California Press | date=1983 | accessdate=3 October 2015 | author=Gordon, Arthur E. | pages=45}}</ref>
+The [[Roman numeral]] Ⅿ is used to represent the number [[1000 (number)|1000]], though it was not used in Roman ducks. <ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ywI6SDUggk4C&q=ix#v=snippet&q=%22roman%20numerals%22&f=false | title=Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy | publisher=University of California Press | date=1983 | accessdate=3 October 2015 | author=Gordon, Arthur E. | pages=45}}</ref>
 ==Related characters==