We now return you to SPASMS Explains the Alphabet. xo, Amy

So I was recently asked when I’m going to continue explaining the alphabet. Now’s as good a time as any. Let’s get back on track with N, the fourteenth letter of the modern English alphabet.

Three thousand and five years ago, give or take a century, the Phoenicians—did you ever wonder about the Phoenicians? Not surprisingly, they lived in Phoenicia, which was an ancient maritime country that had something to do with Syria and was located on the Mediterranean Sea. And it must have been a heck of a boring place, seeing as how all the Phoenicians ever seemed to do was make up letters of the alphabet.

And that’s really the only explanation I can come up with for N. It started out as a squiggle, sort of shaped like the “S” in the “KISS” logo, and it was called nūn, meaning—and please remember that I’m not making any of this up—“fish.” Yeah, I can’t figure it out, either. Your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway, the Greeks came along and messed around with the letter’s orientation as well as its name. Apparently nūn wasn’t silly enough, they had to go and make it nū. I don’t know what “nū” means, but it rhymes with “new” and “gnu,” and that’s certainly worth something.

By the time the Romans got their hands on it, N looked pretty much the same as it does today. I don’t know if they were responsible for calling it “en,” but that’s how it’s generally pronounced nowadays, in case you were wondering.

But I digress. N is at the forefront of such words as “nectarine,” “narcotic” and “nephelometer.” You can’t be nervous without N being somewhere in the picture, but the same goes for nice.

When paired up with U, N gets wild and daring. Together, they turn everything topsy-turvy. Sometimes when coupled with M, N goes strangely silent. Here’s an interesting now-you-hear-it, now-you-don’t dichotomy: “damn” and “damnation.” See?

Of course, there’s another reason the ancient Phoenicians might have invented a letter that looks like a squiggle and is named “fish:”

They had to spell “Phoenicia.”

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.