M is the 13th letter of the alphabet used for the modern English language. It is also used in a number of other languages, including French, German, and Spanish.
Alone or in pairs, M represents its sound in such words as make, among, ram, and mummy.
Scholars believe the letter M evolved from an Egyptian hieroglyph (pictorial symbol) that represented waves of water. Hieroglyphs were adapted to be used for a Semitic language by around 1500 B.C. The alphabet for this Semitic language—the earliest known alphabet—is called Proto-Sinaitic. By 1100 B.C., an alphabet for another Semitic language, Phoenician, had evolved from Proto-Sinaitic. See Semitic languages .
The Phoenician letter that can be traced to the Egyptian water hieroglyph is the 13th letter of the Phoenician alphabet, maym. The Phoenicians used the letter to represent the beginning M sound of maym, which was their word for water. Around 800 B.C., when the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet, maym became mu, which was used for the same sound. The symbol continued to resemble waves, but it was rotated back to a horizontal direction compared to the Phoenician letter.
The Etruscans adopted the Greek alphabet about 700 B.C. By around 650 B.C., the Romans adopted the alphabet from the Etruscans. Both the Etruscans and the Romans continued to use the letter for the sound of M. The Romans made the lines of the letter in their inscriptional (carved) version more vertical when they adopted it from the Etruscans.
See also Alphabet .
