Latin epsilon

Fante translation of the Book of Mormon; note the use of the Latin epsilon in the word N'AHYƐMU.

Latin epsilon or open E (majuscule: Ɛ, minuscule: ɛ) is a letter of the extended Latin alphabet, based on the lowercase of the Greek letter epsilon (ε). It occurs in the orthographies of many Niger–Congo languages, such as Ewe, Akan, and Lingala, and is included in the African reference alphabet.

In the Berber Latin alphabet currently used in Algerian Berber school books,^[1] and before that proposed by the French institute INALCO, it represents a voiced pharyngeal fricative [ʕ]. Some authors use ƹayin ⟨ƹ⟩ instead; both letters are similar in shape with the Arabic ʿayn ⟨ع⟩.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) uses various forms of the Latin epsilon:

U+025B ɛ LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN E represents the open-mid front unrounded vowel
U+025D ɝ LATIN SMALL LETTER REVERSED OPEN E WITH HOOK represents the rhotacized open-mid central vowel
U+025E ɞ LATIN SMALL LETTER CLOSED REVERSED OPEN E represents the open-mid central rounded vowel (shown as U+029A ʚ LATIN SMALL LETTER CLOSED OPEN E on the 1993 IPA chart)

The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses various forms of the Latin epsilon:^[2]

U+1D08 ᴈ LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED OPEN E
U+1D4B ᵋ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL OPEN E
U+1D4C ᵌ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED OPEN E

Unicode[]

Latin epsilon is called "Open E" in Unicode.^[3]

Character information
Preview	Ɛ		ɛ
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER OPEN E		LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN E
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	400	U+0190	603	U+025B
UTF-8	198 144	C6 90	201 155	C9 9B
Numeric character reference	Ɛ	Ɛ	ɛ	ɛ

It looks similar to the lowercase epsilon.

Open O
Writing systems of Africa (section on Latin script)
Open-mid front unrounded vowel
Greek Epsilon
Reversed Ze Ԑ (Cyrillic script)

References[]

^ "Tamazight-Dzayer".
^ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
^ Asmus Freytag; Rick McGowan; Ken Whistler (2006-05-08). "Unicode Technical Note #27: Known Anomalies in Unicode Character Names". The Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 2009-02-24. This is actually a Latin epsilon and should have been so called.

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[1] "Tamazight-Dzayer".

[2] Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).

[3] Asmus Freytag; Rick McGowan; Ken Whistler (2006-05-08). "Unicode Technical Note #27: Known Anomalies in Unicode Character Names". The Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 2009-02-24. This is actually a Latin epsilon and should have been so called.

[1]

[2]

[3]