Ñ

Ñ or ñ (Spanish: eñe [ˈeɲe] ) is a letter of the extended Latin alphabet, formed by placing a tilde (also referred to as a virgulilla in Spanish, in order to differentiate it from other diacritics, which are also called tildes) on top of an upper- or lower-case ⟨n⟩. The origin dates back to medieval Spanish, when the Latin digraph ⟨nn⟩ began to be abbreviated using a single ⟨n⟩ with a roughly wavy line above it, and it eventually became part of the Spanish alphabet in the eighteenth century, when it was first formally defined.

Since then, it has been adopted by other languages, such as Galician, Asturian, the Aragonese, Basque, Chavacano, several Philippine languages (especially Filipino and the Bisayan group), Chamorro, Guarani, Quechua, Mapudungun, Mandinka, Papiamento, and the Tetum. It also appears in the Latin transliteration of Tocharian and many Indian languages, where it represents [ɲ] or [nʲ] (similar to the ⟨ny⟩ in canyon). Additionally, it was adopted in Crimean Tatar, Kazakh, ALA-LC romanization for Turkic languages, the Common Turkic Alphabet, Nauruan, and romanized Quenya, where it represents the phoneme [ŋ] (like the ⟨ng⟩ in wing). It has also been adopted in both Breton and Rohingya, where it indicates the nasalization of the preceding vowel.

Unlike many other letters that use diacritics (such as ⟨ü⟩ in Catalan and Spanish and ⟨ç⟩ in Catalan), ⟨ñ⟩ in Spanish, Galician, Basque, Asturian, Leonese, Guarani and Filipino is considered a letter in its own right, has its own name (Spanish: eñe), and its own place in the alphabet (after ⟨n⟩). Its alphabetical independence is similar to the Germanic ⟨w⟩, which came from a doubled ⟨v⟩.

History

Historically, ⟨ñ⟩ arose as a ligature of ⟨nn⟩; the tilde was shorthand for the second ⟨n⟩, written over the first; compare umlaut, of analogous origin. It is a letter in the Spanish alphabet that is used for many words—for example, the Spanish word año "year" (⟨anno⟩ in Old Spanish) derived from Latin: annus. Other languages used the macron over an ⟨n⟩ or ⟨m⟩ to indicate simple doubling.

Already in medieval Latin palaeography, the sign that in Spanish came to be called virgulilla ("little comma") was used over a vowel to indicate a following nasal consonant (⟨n⟩ or ⟨m⟩) that had been omitted, as in tãtus for tantus or quã for quam. This usage was passed on to other languages using the Latin alphabet although it was subsequently dropped by most. Spanish retained it, however, in some specific cases, particularly to indicate the palatal nasal, the sound that is now spelt as ⟨ñ⟩. The word tilde comes from Spanish, derived by metathesis of the word título as tidlo, this originally from Latin TITVLVS "title" or "heading"; compare cabildo with Latin CAPITULUM.

From spellings of anno abbreviated as año, as explained above, the tilde was thenceforth transferred to the ⟨n⟩ and kept as a useful expedient to indicate the new palatal nasal sound that Spanish had developed in that position: año. The sign was also adopted for the same palatal nasal in all other cases, even when it did not derive from an original ⟨nn⟩, as in leña (from Latin ligna) or señor (from Latin SENIOR).

Other Romance languages have different spellings for this sound: Italian and French use ⟨gn⟩, a consonant cluster that had evolved from Latin, whereas Occitan and Portuguese chose ⟨nh⟩ and Catalan ⟨ny⟩ even though these digraphs had no etymological precedent.

When Morse code was extended to cover languages other than English, a sequence ( — — · — — ) was allotted for this character.

Although ⟨ñ⟩ is used by other languages whose spellings were influenced by Spanish, it originated in Spanish and has become a distinctive symbol of the language's identity.

Cross-linguistic usage

In Spanish it represents a palatal nasal. This is also the case of Philippine languages, Aymara, Basque, Bubi language, Chamorro, Guarani, Leonese, Mapudungún, Quechua, Yavapai, and Iñupiaq, whose orthographies have some basis in that of Spanish. Many languages of Senegal also use it in the same way. Senegal is unique among countries of West Africa in using this letter.

It also represents a palatal nasal in Galician and Uruguayan Portuguese.

In Tetum, it was adopted to represent the same sound in Portuguese loanwords represented by ⟨nh⟩, although this is also used in Tetum, as is ⟨ny⟩, influenced by Indonesian.

In Tagalog, Visayan, and other Philippine languages, most Spanish terms that include ⟨ñ⟩ are respelled with ⟨ny⟩. The conventional exceptions (with considerable variations) are proper names, which usually retain ⟨ñ⟩ and their original Spanish or Hispanicised spelling (Santo Niño, Parañaque, Mañalac, Malacañan). It is collated as the 15th letter of the Filipino alphabet. In old Filipino orthography, the letter was also used, along with ⟨g⟩, to represent [ŋ] (except at the end of a word, when ⟨ng⟩ would be used) if appropriate instead of a tilde, which originally spanned a sequence of ⟨n⟩ and ⟨g⟩ (as in ⟨n͠g⟩), such as pan͠galan ("name"). That is because the old orthography was based on Spanish, and without the tilde, pangalan would have been pronounced with the sequence [ŋɡ] (therefore pang-GAlan). The form ⟨ñg⟩ became a more common way to represent ⟨n͠g⟩ until the early 20th century, mainly because it was more readily available in typesets than the tilde spanning both letters.

It is also used to represent the velar nasal in Crimean Tatar and Nauruan. In Malay, the Congress Spelling System (1957–1972) formerly used it for /ŋ/ before /g/. In Turkmen, it was used for /ŋ/ until 1999. In Latin-script writing of the Tatar language and Lule Sámi language, ⟨ñ⟩ is sometimes used as a substitute for ꞑ, which is not available on many computer systems. In addition to Tatar, ⟨ñ⟩ represents /ŋ/ in the Common Turkic Alphabet.

In the Breton language, it nasalises the preceding vowel, as in Jañ /ʒã/, which corresponds to the French name Jean and has the same pronunciation.

It is used in a number of English terms of Spanish origin, such as jalapeño, piña colada, piñata, and El Niño. The Spanish word cañón, however, became naturalized as canyon (though in British English it is occasionally spelt cañon). Until the middle of the 20th century, adapting it as nn was more common in English, as in the phrase "Battle of Corunna". Now, it is almost always left unmodified. The Society for the Advancement of Spanish Letters in the Anglo Americas (SASLAA) is the preeminent organization focused on promoting the permanent adoption of ⟨ñ⟩ into the English language.