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Ñ or ñ ( ) is a letter of the extended
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from ...
, formed by placing a
tilde The tilde (, also ) is a grapheme or with a number of uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish , which in turn came from the Latin , meaning 'title' or 'superscription'. Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
(also referred to as a in Spanish, in order to differentiate it from other diacritics, which are also called ) on top of an upper- or lower-case . It became part of the
Spanish alphabet Spanish orthography is the orthography used in the Spanish language. The alphabet uses the Latin script. The spelling is fairly phonemic orthography, phonemic, especially in comparison to more opaque orthographies like English orthography, Engl ...
in the eighteenth century when it was first formally defined, but it has subsequently been used in other languages, such as Galician, Asturian, the Aragonese ''
Grafía de Uesca Aragonese ( ; in Aragonese) is a Romance language spoken in several dialects by about 12,000 people as of 2011, in the Pyrenees valleys of Aragon, Spain, primarily in the comarcas of Somontano de Barbastro, Jacetania, Alto Gállego, Sobrarbe ...
'',
Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...
,
Chavacano Chavacano or Chabacano () is a group of Spanish-based creole language varieties spoken in the Philippines. The variety spoken in Zamboanga City, located in the southern Philippine island group of Mindanao, has the highest concentration of spea ...
, some
Philippine languages The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (language ...
(especially Filipino and Bisayan), Chamorro, Guarani,
Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several Indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, an Indigenous South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language ...
,
Mapudungun Mapuche ( , ; from 'land' and 'people', meaning 'the people of the land') or Mapudungun (from 'land' and 'speak, speech', meaning 'the speech of the land'; also spelled Mapuzugun and Mapudungu) is either a language isolate or member of the s ...
,
Mandinka Mandinka, Mandika, Mandinkha, Mandinko, or Mandingo may refer to: Media * Mandingo (novel), ''Mandingo'' (novel), a bestselling novel published in 1957 * Mandingo (film), ''Mandingo'' (film), a 1975 film based on the eponymous 1957 novel * ''Man ...
,
Papiamento Papiamento () or Papiamentu (; ) is a Portuguese-based creole language spoken in the Dutch Caribbean. It is the most widely spoken language on Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao ( ABC Islands). The language, spelled in Aruba and in Bonaire and ...
, and
Tetum Tetum may refer to: * Tetum language, an Austronesian language ** Tetum alphabet, used to write the Tetum language * Tetum people, an ethnic group of East Timor and Indonesia {{disambiguation Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...
alphabets, as well as in Latin transliteration of Tocharian and many Indian languages, where it represents or (similar to the in "canyon"). It represents (the in "wing") in Crimean Tatar, Kazakh, ALA-LC romanization for Turkic languages, the Common Turkic Alphabet, Nauruan and romanized
Quenya Quenya ()Tolkien wrote in his "Outline of Phonology" (in '' Parma Eldalamberon'' 19, p. 74) dedicated to the phonology of Quenya: is "a sound as in English ''new''". In Quenya is a combination of consonants, ibidem., p. 81. is a constructed l ...
. In
Breton Breton most often refers to: *anything associated with Brittany, and generally **Breton people **Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany ** Breton (horse), a breed **Gale ...
and in
Rohingya The Rohingya people (; ; ) are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who predominantly follow Islam from Rakhine State, Myanmar. Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an estimated 1.4 million Ro ...
, it denotes
nasalization In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation in British English) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . ...
of the preceding vowel. Unlike many other letters that use
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
s (such as in Catalan and
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...
and in Catalan and sometimes in
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...
), in
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...
, Galician,
Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...
, Asturian, Leonese, Guarani and Filipino is considered a letter in its own right, has its own name (Spanish: '), and its own place in the alphabet (after ). Historically, it came from a superscript abbreviation for a doubled . Its alphabetical independence is similar to the Germanic , which came from a doubled .


History

Historically, arose as a
ligature Ligature may refer to: Language * Ligature (writing), a combination of two or more letters into a single symbol (typography and calligraphy) * Ligature (grammar), a morpheme that links two words Medicine * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture us ...
of ; the tilde was
shorthand Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to Cursive, longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Gr ...
for the second , 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 "year" ( in
Old Spanish Old Spanish (, , ; ), also known as Old Castilian or Medieval Spanish, refers to the varieties of Ibero-Romance spoken predominantly in Castile and environs during the Middle Ages. The earliest, longest, and most famous literary composition in O ...
) derived from . Other languages used the macron over an or to indicate simple doubling. Already in
medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It was also the administrative language in the former Western Roman Empire, Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidi ...
palaeography, the sign that in Spanish came to be called ("little comma") was used over a vowel to indicate a following nasal consonant ( or ) 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 voiced palatal nasal is a type of consonant used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter ''n'' with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom ...
, the sound that is now spelt as . 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 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 , as in (from Latin ''ligna'') or (from Latin SENIOR). Other
Romance languages The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
have different spellings for this sound:
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...
and French use , a consonant cluster that had evolved from Latin, whereas
Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...
and Portuguese chose and Catalan even though these digraphs had no etymological precedent. When
Morse code Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...
was extended to cover languages other than English, a sequence ( — — · — — ) was allotted for this character. Although is used by other languages whose spellings were influenced by Spanish, it has recently been chosen to represent the identity of the Spanish language.


Cross-linguistic usage

In Spanish it represents a
palatal nasal The voiced palatal nasal is a type of consonant used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter ''n'' with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom ...
. This is also the case of
Philippine languages The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (language ...
,
Aymara Aymara may refer to: Languages and people * Aymaran languages, the second most widespread Andean language ** Aymara language, the main language within that family ** Central Aymara, the other surviving branch of the Aymara(n) family, which today ...
,
Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several Indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, an Indigenous South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language ...
, Mapudungún, Guarani,
Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...
, Chamorro, Leonese,
Yavapai The Yavapai ( ) are a Native American tribe in Arizona. Their Yavapai language belongs to the Upland Yuman branch of the proposed Hokan language family. Today Yavapai people are enrolled in the following federally recognized tribes: * Fort ...
, and , whose orthographies have some basis in that of Spanish. Many
languages of Senegal Senegal is a multilingual country: ''Ethnologue'' lists 36 languages, Wolof language, Wolof being the most widely spoken language. French language, French, is the only official language of Senegal, used mainly by the administration, the educat ...
also use it in the same way.
Senegal Senegal, officially the Republic of Senegal, is the westernmost country in West Africa, situated on the Atlantic Ocean coastline. It borders Mauritania to Mauritania–Senegal border, the north, Mali to Mali–Senegal border, the east, Guinea t ...
is unique among countries of
West Africa West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...
in using this letter. It also represents a palatal nasal in Galician and
Uruguayan Portuguese Uruguayan Portuguese (, ), also known as () and riverense, and referred to by its speakers as (), is a variety of Portuguese in South America with heavy influence from Rioplatense Spanish. It is spoken in north-eastern Uruguay, near the Br ...
. In
Tetum Tetum may refer to: * Tetum language, an Austronesian language ** Tetum alphabet, used to write the Tetum language * Tetum people, an ethnic group of East Timor and Indonesia {{disambiguation Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...
, it was adopted to represent the same sound in Portuguese loanwords represented by , although this is also used in Tetum, as is , influenced by Indonesian. In Tagalog,
Visayan Visayans ( Cebuano: ''mga Bisayà'' ) are a Philippine ethnolinguistic family group or metaethnicity native to the Visayas, to the southernmost islands south of Luzon, and to a significant portion of Mindanao. They are composed of numerous di ...
, and other
Philippine languages The Philippine languages or Philippinic are a proposed group by R. David Paul Zorc (1986) and Robert Blust (1991; 2005; 2019) that include all the languages of the Philippines and northern Sulawesi, Indonesia—except Sama–Bajaw (language ...
, most Spanish terms that include are respelled with . The conventional exceptions (with considerable variations) are proper names, which usually retain and their original
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...
or Hispanicised spelling (, , , ). It is
collated Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fil ...
as the 15th letter of the
Filipino alphabet The modern Filipino alphabet (), otherwise known as the Filipino alphabet (), is the alphabet of the Filipino language, the official national language and one of the two official languages of the Philippines. The modern Filipino alphabet is ma ...
. In old Filipino orthography, the letter was also used, along with , to represent (except at the end of a word, when would be used) if appropriate instead of a tilde, which originally spanned a sequence of and (as in ), 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 (therefore ''pang-GAlan''). The form became a more common way to represent 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 The voiced velar nasal, also known as eng, engma, or agma (from Greek 'fragment'), is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''E ...
in Crimean Tatar and Nauruan. In Malay, the Congress Spelling System (1957–1972) formerly used it for before . In Turkmen, it was used for until 1999. In Latin-script writing of the
Tatar language Tatar ( ; or ) is a Turkic languages, Turkic language spoken by the Volga Tatars mainly located in modern Tatarstan (European Russia), as well as Siberia. It should not be confused with Crimean Tatar language, Crimean Tatar or Siberian Tatar ...
and
Lule Sámi language Lule Sámi (, , ) is a Uralic-Sámi language spoken around the Lule River in Sweden and in the northern parts of Nordland county in Norway. In Norway it is especially seen in Hamarøy Municipality (formerly Tysfjord Municipality), where Lule Sámi ...
, is sometimes used as a substitute for , which is not available on many computer systems. In addition to Tatar, represents in the Common Turkic Alphabet. In the
Breton language Breton (, , ; or in Morbihan) is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic languages, Celtic language group spoken in Brittany, part of modern-day France. It is the only Celtic language still widely in use on the European mainland, albei ...
, it nasalises the preceding vowel, as in , which corresponds to the French name and has the same pronunciation. It is used in a number of English terms of Spanish origin, such as ''
jalapeño The jalapeño ( , , ) is a medium-sized chili pepper Fruit, pod type cultivar of the species ''Capsicum annuum''. A mature jalapeño chili is long and wide, and hangs down from the plant. The pungency of jalapeño peppers varies, but is usual ...
'', ''
piña colada The piña colada (; , "pineapple", and , "strained") is a cocktail made with rum, cream of coconut, and pineapple juice, usually served either blended or shaken with ice. It may be garnished with either a pineapple wedge, maraschino cherry, o ...
'', ''
piñata A piñata (, ) is a container, often made of papier-mâché, pottery, or cloth, that is decorated, filled with candy, and then broken as part of a celebration. Piñatas are commonly associated with Mexico. The idea of breaking a container fill ...
'', and ''
El Niño EL, El or el may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional entities * El, a character from the manga series ''Shugo Chara!'' by Peach-Pit * Eleven (''Stranger Things'') (El), a fictional character in the TV series ''Stranger Things'' * El, fami ...
''. The Spanish word ''cañón'', however, became naturalized as ''
canyon A canyon (; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), gorge or chasm, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tendency t ...
'' (though in
British English British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...
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 The Battle of Corunna (or ''A Coruña'', ''La Corunna'', ''La Coruña'' or ''La Corogne''), in Spain known as Battle of Elviña, took place on 16 January 1809, when a French corps under Marshal of the Empire Jean de Dieu Soult attacked a Briti ...
". 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 into the English language.


Cultural significance

has come to represent the identity of the Spanish language. Latin publisher Bill Teck labeled
Hispanic The term Hispanic () are people, Spanish culture, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or broadly. In some contexts, Hispanic and Latino Americans, especially within the United States, "Hispanic" is used as an Ethnici ...
culture and its influence on the United States "Generation Ñ" and later started a magazine with that name. Organizations such as the
Instituto Cervantes Instituto Cervantes (, the Cervantes Institute) is a worldwide nonprofit organization created by the Spanish government in 1991. It is named after Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), the author of ''Don Quixote'' and perhaps the most important fi ...
and the
National Association of Hispanic Journalists The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) is a Washington, D.C.–based organization dedicated to the advancement of Hispanic and Latino journalists in the United States and Puerto Rico. It was established in 1984. NAHJ has appr ...
have adopted the letter as their mark for Hispanic heritage. It was used in the
Spanish Republican Air Force The Spanish Republican Air Force was the air arm of the Armed Forces of the Second Spanish Republic, the legally established government of Spain between 1931 and 1939. Initially divided into two branches: Military Aeronautics () and Naval Aeron ...
for aircraft identification. The circumstances surrounding the crash of serial 'Ñ'
Potez 540 The Potez 540 was a French multi-role aircraft of the 1930s. Designed and built by Potez, it served with the French Air Force as a Aerial reconnaissance, reconnaissance bomber, also serving with the Spanish Republican Air Force during the Spanish ...
plane that was shot down over the
Sierra de Gúdar Sierra de Gúdar is a mountain range in the Gúdar-Javalambre and Maestrazgo comarcas of Aragon and the Alto Mijares comarca of the Valencian Community, Spain. The highest point in the range is Peñarroya (2,019 m). Geography This mounta ...
range of the
Sistema Ibérico The Iberian System is one of the major systems of mountain ranges in Spain. It consists of a vast and complex area of mostly relatively high and rugged mountain chains and massifs located in the central region of the Iberian Peninsula, but ...
near Valdelinares inspired French writer
André Malraux Georges André Malraux ( ; ; 3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French novelist, art theorist, and minister of cultural affairs. Malraux's novel ''La Condition Humaine'' (''Man's Fate'') (1933) won the Prix Goncourt. He was appointed ...
to write the novel ''L'Espoir'' (1937), translated into English as '' Man's Hope'' and made into the movie named '' Espoir: Sierra de Teruel''. In 1991, a
European Community The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organisation created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisbo ...
report recommended the repeal of a regulation preventing the sale in
Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
of computer products not supporting "all the characteristics of the Spanish writing system," claiming that it was a
protectionist Protectionism, sometimes referred to as trade protectionism, is the economic policy of restricting imports from other countries through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, import quotas, and a variety of other government regulations. ...
measure against the principles of the free market. This would have allowed the distribution of keyboards without an "Ñ" key. The
Real Academia Española The Royal Spanish Academy (, ; ) is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and is affiliated with national language academies in 22 other Hispanopho ...
stated that the matter was a serious attack against the language. Nobel Prize winner in literature
Gabriel García Márquez Gabriel José García Márquez (; 6 March 1927 – 17 April 2014) was a Colombian writer and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo () or Gabito () throughout Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th centur ...
expressed his disdain over its elimination by saying: "The 'Ñ' is not an archaeological piece of junk, but just the opposite: a cultural leap of a Romance language that left the others behind in expressing with only one letter a sound that other languages continue to express with two." Among other forms of controversy are those pertaining to the anglicization of Spanish surnames. The replacement of with another letter alters the pronunciation and meaning of a word or name, in the same manner that replacing any letter in a given word with another one would. For example, '' Peña'' is a common Spanish surname and a
common noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an object or subject within a phrase, clause, or sentence.Example n ...
that means "rocky hill"; it is often anglicized as ''Pena'', changing the name to the Spanish word for "pity", often used in terms of sorrow. When
Federico Peña Federico Fabian Peña (born March 15, 1947) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 12th United States secretary of transportation from 1993 to 1997 and the 8th United States secretary of energy from 1997 to 1998, during the pres ...
was first running for
mayor of Denver This is a list of mayors of Denver, the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Mayors of Denver can now serve three four-year terms. List See also *List of municipalities in Colorado * Bibliography of Colorado *Geog ...
in 1983, the ''
Denver Post ''The Denver Post'' is a daily newspaper and website published in the Denver metropolitan area. it has an average print circulation of 57,265. In 2016, its website received roughly six million monthly unique visitors generating more than 13 mil ...
'' printed his name without the tilde as "Pena." After he won the election, they began printing his name with the tilde. As Peña's administration had many critics, their objections were sometimes whimsically expressed as "ÑO." Since 2011, CNN's Spanish-language news channel incorporates a new logo wherein a tilde is placed over both . Another news channel, TLN en Español, has , with taking the place of the expected , as its logo. As part of
April Fool's Day April Fools' Day or April Fool's Day (rarely called All Fools' Day) is an annual custom on the 1st of April consisting of practical jokes, hoaxes, and pranks. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fool " at the recipient. Mas ...
, in 2013, Puerto Rican linguistics professor Aida Vergne penned a mock newspaper article stating that the
Royal Spanish Academy The Royal Spanish Academy (, ; ) is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and is affiliated with national language academies in 22 other Hispanophon ...
had opted to eliminate from Spanish, instead being replaced by the original in Old Spanish. As the Academy had previously eliminated letters such as and , such an allegation was taken seriously and occasionally the Academy has to resort to deny and clarify the allegation. The
Google Doodle Google Doodle is a special, temporary alteration of the logo on Google's homepages intended to commemorate holidays, events, achievements, and historical figures. The first Google Doodle honored the 1998 edition of the long-running annual Bu ...
for 23 April 2021 celebrated as part of UN Spanish Language Day.


Computer usage

In
Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
has the code U+00D1 (decimal 209) while has the code U+00F1 (decimal 241). Additionally, they can be generated by typing ''N'' or ''n'' followed by a combining
tilde The tilde (, also ) is a grapheme or with a number of uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish , which in turn came from the Latin , meaning 'title' or 'superscription'. Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
modifier, ̃, U+0303, decimal 771. In HTML character entity reference, the codes for and are Ñ and ñ or Ñ and ñ. has its own key in the Spanish and Latin American keyboard layouts (see the corresponding sections at
keyboard layout A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard. Standard keybo ...
and Tilde#Role of mechanical typewriters). The following instructions apply only to English-language keyboards. On Android devices, holding ''N'' or ''n'' down on the keyboard makes entry of and possible. On
Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...
operating systems (including
Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
), it can be typed by pressing and holding the Option key and then typing ''N'', followed by typing either ''N'' or ''n''. On the
iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...
and
iPad The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...
, which use the Apple
iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...
operating system, the is accessed by holding down the key, which opens a menu (on an English-language keyboard). Apple's Mac OS X 10.7 Lion operating system also made the available in the same way. The lowercase can be made in the
Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
operating system by typing or on the numeric keypad (with Num Lock turned on); the uppercase can be made with or . Character Map in
Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
identifies the letter as "Latin Small/Capital Letter N With Tilde". A soft (not physical) Spanish-language keyboard is easily installed in Windows. In
Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processor program, word processing program developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platf ...
, can be typed by pressing Control-Shift-Tilde () and then an . On
Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
it can be created by pressing Ctrl+Shift+U and then typing '00d1' or '00f1', followed by space or Ctrl to end the character code input. This produces or . Another option (for any operating system) is to configure the system to use the
US-International QWERTY ( ) is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top letter row of the keyboard: . The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sholes and Glidden typewriter ...
keyboard layout, with which can be produced either by holding Alt Gr and then pressing ''N'', or by typing the tilde () followed by . Yet another option is to use a
compose key A compose key (sometimes called multi key) is a key on a computer keyboard that indicates that the following (usually 2 or more) keystrokes trigger the insertion of an alternate character, typically a precomposed character or a symbol. For insta ...
(hardware-based or software-emulated). Pressing the compose key, then , and then results in . A capital can be substituted to produce , and in most cases the order of and can be reversed.


Use in URLs

may be used in
internationalized domain name An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name that contains at least one label displayed in software applications, in whole or in part, in non-Latin script or alphabet or in the Latin alphabet-based characters with diacrit ...
s, but it will have to be converted from Unicode to
ASCII ASCII ( ), an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable character, printable and 33 control character, control c ...
using
Punycode Punycode is a representation of Unicode with the limited ASCII character subset used for Internet hostnames. Using Punycode, host names containing Unicode characters are transcoded to a subset of ASCII consisting of letters, digits, and hyphens, w ...
during the registration process (i.e. from www.piñata.com to www.xn--piata-pta.com). In URLs (except for the domain name), may be replaced by %C3%91, and by %C3%B1. This is not needed for newer browsers. The hex digits represent the
UTF-8 UTF-8 is a character encoding standard used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode Transformation Format 8-bit''. Almost every webpage is transmitted as UTF-8. UTF-8 supports all 1,112,0 ...
encoding of and . This feature allows almost any Unicode character to be encoded, and it is considered important to support languages other than English.


See also

*
Tilde The tilde (, also ) is a grapheme or with a number of uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish , which in turn came from the Latin , meaning 'title' or 'superscription'. Its primary use is as a diacritic (accent) in ...
*
English terms with diacritical marks English rarely uses diacritics, which are symbols indicating the modification of a letter's sound when spoken. Most of the affected words are in terms imported from other languages. Certain diacritics are often called ''accents''. The only diacri ...


Other symbols for the palatal nasal

*
Gn (digraph) This is a list of digraphs used in various Latin alphabets. In the list, letters with diacritics are arranged in alphabetical order according to their base, e.g. is alphabetised with , not at the end of the alphabet, as it would be in Danish, ...
*
Nh (digraph) Nh is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, a combination of N and H. Together with '' lh'' and the interpunct, it is a typical feature of Occitan, a language illustrated by medieval troubadours. It commonly represents the voiced palatal nasal , whic ...
*
Nj (letter) Nj ( titlecase form; all- capitals form NJ, lowercase nj) is a letter present in South Slavic languages such as the Latin-alphabet version of Serbo-Croatian and in romanised Macedonian. It is also used in the Albanian alphabet. In all of these ...
*
Ny (digraph) Ny is a digraph in a number of languages such as Catalan, Ganda, Filipino/Tagalog, Hungarian, Swahili and Malay. In most of these languages, including all of the ones named above, it denotes the palatal nasal (). To represent the palatal n ...
* Ɲ * Ń * Њ * Ň * (IPA symbol)


Other letters with tilde

* Ã * *
G̃ / g̃ is a Letter (alphabet), letter which combines the common letter G with a tilde. The character doesn't exist in most alphabets. Examples of alphabets with this letter are: * Guarani alphabet – where the tilde marks nasalization of , ...
* Ĩ * * Õ * * Ũ *


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:N Tilde Breton language Latin letters with diacritics Phonetic transcription symbols Spanish language