All Topics  
M

 

 

Email Print
Bookmark Link

 

 

 

M
 
 
  Topics M Topic Home

M is the thirteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabetLatin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world tod...
. Its name in EnglishEnglish language

English is a widely distributed language that originated in England but is now the primary language in numerous countries....
 is spelled em ().
HistoryThe letter M derives its shape from the PhoenicianPhoenician alphabet Summary

The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to begin with a cut-off date ...
 MemMem

Mem is the thirteenth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet ....
, via the GreekGreek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Greek language since about the 9th century BC....
 MuMu (letter)

The word mu is written in traditional Greek polytonic orthography....
 (?, µ). Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water. It is known that Semitic people working in Egypt c. 2000 BC borrowed a hieroglyph for Water that was first used for an alveolar nasalAlveolar nasal

The alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages....
 (, because of the Egyptian word for Water, "n-t". This same symbol became used for M in Semitic, because their word for water began with that sound.

The letter M represents the bilabial nasal consonantNasal consonant

A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing a...
 sound, , in Classical languages as well as the modern languageLanguage

A language is a system of s, such as voice sounds, gestures or written symbols that encode or decode information....
s. The Oxford English DictionaryOxford English Dictionary Summary

The Oxford English Dictionary is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press , and is generally regarded as t...
 (first edition) says that 'm' is sometimes a vowelVowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract so tha...
 in words like spasm and in the suffix -ism.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'M'
Start a new discussion about 'M'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum





Quotations


Children:

singing Just you wait a little while, the nasty man in black will come. With his little chopper, he will chop you up!






Encyclopedia


M is the thirteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabetLatin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world tod...
. Its name in EnglishEnglish language

English is a widely distributed language that originated in England but is now the primary language in numerous countries....
 is spelled em ().

History

The letter M derives its shape from the PhoenicianPhoenician alphabet Summary

The Phoenician alphabet is a continuation of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, by convention taken to begin with a cut-off date ...
 MemMem

Mem is the thirteenth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet ....
, via the GreekGreek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is an alphabet that has been used to write the Greek language since about the 9th century BC....
 MuMu (letter)

The word mu is written in traditional Greek polytonic orthography....
 (?, µ). Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water. It is known that Semitic people working in Egypt c. 2000 BC borrowed a hieroglyph for Water that was first used for an alveolar nasalAlveolar nasal

The alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages....
 (, because of the Egyptian word for Water, "n-t". This same symbol became used for M in Semitic, because their word for water began with that sound.

The letter M represents the bilabial nasal consonantNasal consonant

A nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing a...
 sound, , in Classical languages as well as the modern languageLanguage

A language is a system of s, such as voice sounds, gestures or written symbols that encode or decode information....
s. The Oxford English DictionaryOxford English Dictionary Summary

The Oxford English Dictionary is a dictionary published by the Oxford University Press , and is generally regarded as t...
 (first edition) says that 'm' is sometimes a vowelVowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract so tha...
 in words like spasm and in the suffix -ism. In modern terminology, this would be described as a syllabic consonantSyllabic consonant

A syllabic consonant is a consonant which either forms a syllable of its own, or is the nucleus of a syllable....
 — IPA .

Codes for computing


In UnicodeUnicode

Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consis...
 the capital M is codepoint U+004D and the lower case m is U+006D.

The ASCIIASCII

ASCII , generally pronounced , is a character encoding based on the English alphabet....
 code for capital M is 77 and for lowercase m is 109; or in binaryFacts About Binary numeral system

The binary numeral system represents numeric values using two symbols, typically 0 and 1....
 01001101 and 01101101, correspondingly.

The EBCDICEBCDIC

EBCDIC is an 8-bit character encoding used on IBM mainframe operating systems, like z/OS, OS/390, VM and VSE, as well as I...
 code for capital M is 212 and for lowercase m is 148.

The numeric character referenceNumeric character reference

A numeric character reference is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-based markup languages such as HTML a...
s in HTMLHTML

In computing, HyperText Markup Language is a predominant markup language for the creation of web pages....
 and XML are "M" and "m" for upper and lower case respectively.

Meanings of M

See M (disambiguation)M (disambiguation)

M is the thirteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet...
.

See also

  • ?, ? - Em (Cyrillic)Em (Cyrillic)

    Em is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant unless it is before a palatalizing vowel when it repres...
  • ?, µ - Mu (Greek)Mu (letter)

    The word mu is written in traditional Greek polytonic orthography....