Nun is the fourteenth letter of many Semitic
abjadAn abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol always or usually stands for a consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel....
s, including Phoenician,
AramaicAramaic is a Semitic language with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship...
,
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
and
Arabic alphabetThe Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic and Urdu. After the Latin alphabet, it is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world....
(in abjadi order). It is the third letter in
ThaanaThaana, Taana or Tāna is the modern writing system of the Divehi language spoken in the Maldives...
(ނ), pronounced as "noonu". Its sound value is .
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the
GreekThe Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is the first and oldest alphabet in the narrow sense that it notes each vowel and consonant with a separate symbol. It is as such in continuous use to...
nuNu , is the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 50...
(Ν), Etruscan ,
LatinThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...
NN is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled en.- Usage :N represents the dental or alveolar nasal in virtually all languages that use the Latin alphabet. A common digraph with
is , which represents a velar nasal in a variety of languages,...
, and
CyrillicThe Cyrillic script writing system isan alphabet developed in the First Bulgarian Empire, and used in the Slavic national languages of Russian, Bulgarian, Belarusian, Rusyn, Serbian, Macedonian, and Ukrainian, and in the non-Slavic languages of Moldovan, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Tuvan, and...
Н.
Nun is thought to have come from a pictogram of a snake (the Hebrew word for snake,
nachash begins with a Nun and snake in Aramaic is
nun) or eel.
Nun is the fourteenth letter of many Semitic
abjadAn abjad is a type of writing system in which each symbol always or usually stands for a consonant; the reader must supply the appropriate vowel....
s, including Phoenician,
AramaicAramaic is a Semitic language with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship...
,
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
and
Arabic alphabetThe Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic and Urdu. After the Latin alphabet, it is the second-most widely used alphabet around the world....
(in abjadi order). It is the third letter in
ThaanaThaana, Taana or Tāna is the modern writing system of the Divehi language spoken in the Maldives...
(ނ), pronounced as "noonu". Its sound value is .
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the
GreekThe Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is the first and oldest alphabet in the narrow sense that it notes each vowel and consonant with a separate symbol. It is as such in continuous use to...
nuNu , is the 13th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 50...
(Ν), Etruscan ,
LatinThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, and was initially developed by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language.During the...
NN is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled en.- Usage :N represents the dental or alveolar nasal in virtually all languages that use the Latin alphabet. A common digraph with
is , which represents a velar nasal in a variety of languages,...
, and
CyrillicThe Cyrillic script writing system isan alphabet developed in the First Bulgarian Empire, and used in the Slavic national languages of Russian, Bulgarian, Belarusian, Rusyn, Serbian, Macedonian, and Ukrainian, and in the non-Slavic languages of Moldovan, Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Tuvan, and...
Н.
Origins
Nun is thought to have come from a pictogram of a snake (the Hebrew word for snake,
nachash begins with a Nun and snake in Aramaic is
nun) or eel. Some have hypothesized a hieroglyph of a fish in water for its origin (in Arabic,
nūn means large fish or whale). The Phoenician letter was named "fish", but the glyph likely descends from Proto-Canaanite "snake", ultimately from a
hieroglyphEgyptian hieroglyphs was a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that contained a combination of logographic and alphabetic elements. Egyptians used cursive hieroglyphs for religious literature on papyrus and wood...
representing a snake,
I10
(see
Middle Bronze Age alphabetsThe Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar undeciphered scripts, dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age , and believed to be ancestral to nearly all modern alphabets:...
). in modern Arabic literally means "bad luck". The cognate letter in
Ge'ezGe'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa...
and descended Semitic languages of Ethiopia is
nehas, which also means "brass".
Hebrew Nun
| Orthographic The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example for Kurdish, there can be more than one orthography. Orthography is derived from Greek ὀρθός orthós and γράφειν...
variants |
position
in
word |
Various Print Fonts |
Cursive
Hebrew |
Rashi
ScriptRashi script is a semi-cursive typeface for the Hebrew alphabet, in which Rashi's commentaries are printed both in the Talmud and Tanakh . This does not mean that Rashi himself used such a script: the typeface is based on a 15th century Sephardic semi-cursive hand and was called by the Ashkenazic...
|
| Serif | Sans-serifIn typography, a sans-serif or sans serif typeface is one that does not have the small features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the Latin word sans, meaning "without"....
| Monospaced |
|---|
| non final |
נ |
נ |
נ |
|
|
| final |
ן |
ן |
ן |
|
|
Pronunciation
Nun represents an
alveolar nasalThe alveolar nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in numerous spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar nasals is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is n....
, (
IPAThe International Phonetic Alphabet
["The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...]
: ), like the English letter
NN is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled en.- Usage :N represents the dental or alveolar nasal in virtually all languages that use the Latin alphabet. A common digraph with
is , which represents a velar nasal in a variety of languages,...
.
Variations
Nun, like
KaphKaph is the eleventh letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Kaf , Arabic alphabet , Persian alphabet...
,
MemMem is the thirteenth letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic...
,
PePe is the seventeenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Pei , Persian alphabet Pe and Arabic alphabet ....
, and Tzadi, has a final form, used at the end of words. Its shape changes from
נ to
ן.
There are also nine instances of an
inverted nunInverted nun is a rare character - the letter nun in mirror image - which appears in the Masoretic text of the Tanakh in nine different places:...
(׆) in the
TanakhThe Tanakh is a name for the Bible used in Rabbinic Judaism, also known as the Masoretic Text. The name "Tanakh" is a Hebrew acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...
.
Significance
In
gematriaGematria or gimatria is a system of assigning numerical value to a word or phrase, in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other, or bear some relation to the number itself as it may apply to a person's age, the calendar year, or the like...
, Nun represents the number 50. Its final form represents 700 but this is rarely used, Tav and
ShinShin may refer to:* Shin In-Seob Korean footballer, currently playing for Adelaide United* Shinbone, the larger of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates* Shin Buddhism, a widely practiced branch of Buddhism...
(400+300) being used instead.
As in Arabic, nun as an abbreviation can stand for
neqevah, feminine.
In medieval Rabbinic writings, Nun Sophit (Final Nun) stood for "Son of" (
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
ben or
ibn).
Nun is also one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a
tagin) when written in a
Sefer TorahA Sefer Torah is a handwritten copy of the Torah or Pentateuch, the holiest book within Judaism. It must meet extremely strict standards of production. The Torah scroll is mainly used in the ritual of Torah reading during Jewish services...
. See
ShinShin is the twenty-first letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Aramaic/Hebrew , and Arabic .Its sound value is a voiceless sibilant, or ....
,
Ayin' or ' is the sixteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic . It is the twenty first letter in the new Persian alphabet...
,
Teth' is the ninth letter of many Semitic abjads , including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tet , Syriac and Arabic ; it is 9th in abjadi order and 16th in modern Arabic order....
, Gimmel,
ZayinZayin is the seventh letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Aramaic , Hebrew , Syriac and Arabic alphabet []...
, and Tzadi.
In the game of
dreidelA dreidel is a four-sided spinning top, played with during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. The dreidel is used for a form of the gambling game Teetotum .Each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet:...
, a rolled Nun passes play to the next player with no other action.
Arabic nūn
The letter is named
nūn, and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:
Nūn is used as a suffix indicating present-tense plural feminine nouns; for example هي تكتب
hiya taktub ("she writes") becomes هنّ تكتبن
hunna taktabna ("they [feminine] write").
Nūn is also used as the prefix for first-person plural imperfective/
present tenseThe present tense is the tense that may be used to express:* action at the present* a state of being;* an occurrence in the near future; or* an action that occurred in the past and continues up to the present....
verbs. Thus هو يكتب
huwwa yaktub ("he writes") → نحن نكتب
("we write").
See also
- Nunation
In some Semitic languages, notably Arabic, nunation is the addition of a final -n to a noun or adjective to indicate that it is fully declinable and syntactically unmarked for definiteness....
- Setaceous Hebrew Character (Xestia c-nigrum)
The Setaceous Hebrew Character is a moth of the family Noctuidae. It is a common species throughout Europe.The forewings of this species are reddish brown with distinctive patterning towards the base: a black mark resembling the Hebrew letter Nun:
mothA moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. The differences between butterflies and moths are more than just taxonomy. Sometimes the names "Rhopalocera" and "Heterocera" are used to formalize the popular distinction...
of the family NoctuidaeThe Noctuidae or Owlet moths are a family of robustly-built moths that includes more than 35,000 known species out of possibly 100,000 total, in more than 4,200 genera. They constitute the largest family in the Lepidoptera....
.