{{short description|Modified letter E used in transcribing old Gaelic, Latin and Old Norse texts}} 270px|thumb|Part of a Latin book published in Rome in 1632. ''E caudata'' is used in the words '''Sacrę''', '''propagandę''', '''prædictę''', and '''grammaticę'''. The spelling '''grammaticæ''', with ''æ'', is also used. The '''e caudata''' ({{IPAc-la|ē|_|c|au|'|d|ā|t|a}}, Latin for "tailed e", from {{langx|la|cauda}} — "tail"; sometimes also called the '''e cedilla''', '''hooked e''', or '''looped e'''<ref name='benes'>{{cite journal |first=Carrie E. |last=Beneš |date=2003 |title=The Appearance and Spread of the E-Cedilla in Latin Bookhands |journal=Manuscripta |doi=10.1484/J.MSS.2.300664 |volume=43-44 |pages=1–44 }}</ref>) is a modified form of the letter ''E'' that is usually graphically represented in printed text as ''E'' with ogonek ('''ę''') but has a distinct history of usage. It was used in Latin from as early as the sixth century<ref name=benes/> to represent the vowel also written ''ae'' or ''æ''. In old Gaelic texts from the 13th century, it represented an ''ea'' ligature.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.vanhamel.nl/codecs/Ea_(ligature)|title=ea (ligature) • CODECS: Online Database and e-Resources for Celtic Studies|website=www.vanhamel.nl|access-date=2016-07-13}}</ref>
In Middle and Early Modern Irish manuscripts, and in unnormalised transcriptions of them, e caudata is used for ''e'', ''ae'', and ''ea''.
In Old Norse manuscripts, e caudata was used for both short and long versions of {{IPA|/æ/}}. In a few texts in Old Norse, it represents short {{IPA|/æ/}}, the result of i-mutation of Proto-Germanic {{IPA|*/a/}}, and contrasts with ''e'', which represents Proto-Germanic {{IPA|*/e/}}. However, because these two vowels eventually merged to {{IPA|/e/}} in the written varieties of Old Norse, they are commonly both written as ''e''.{{Citation needed|date=October 2009|reason=Never heard of this before. Perhaps change is Middle Icel.?}}
==Latin== [[File:Column of preface from Lindisfarne Gospels.png|thumb|Part of the Lindisfarne Gospels, written around 700. An e caudata with a loop-shaped diacritic is used in the first line: "'''reliquorum quę aliis'''." The ''ae'' is also written as two separate letters in the second-to-last line: "'''& singulis sua quaeq[ue]'''".]] The use of the e caudata in medieval Latin manuscripts, like the use of the ligature ''æ'', was a transitional stage in the gradual change from representing the diphthong ''ae'' with the separate letters ''ae'', as it was written throughout antiquity, to representing it with the letter ''e''.<ref name=benes/> (This phoneme was pronounced as {{IPAc-la|ae}} in the classical Latin of the late Roman Republic and early to middle Empire, but at some point between the second half of the 2nd century and the beginning of the 4th century AD, its pronunciation changed to [ε], so that it was indistinguishable from the short ''e'' in the pronunciation of the late Empire and the Middle Ages;<ref>{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/sturtevant-e.-the-pronunciation-of-greek-and-latin/page/56/mode/1up |page=56 |first=E. H. |last=Sturtevant |author-link=Edgar Howard Sturtevant |title=The pronunciation of Greek and Latin: The sounds and accents |publisher=University of Chicago Press |date=1920 }}</ref> indeed, medieval scribes sometimes hypercorrected by representing with ''ae'', ''æ'', or ''ę'' what in classical Latin had been a monophthongal ''e''.<ref name='benes'/>) It probably originated as a modified form of the ligature ''æ'' with only the lower loop and not the upper line of the ''a'' drawn attached to the ''e'', as in medieval manuscripts the diacritic below the ''e'' is sometimes drawn as a loop, similar in shape to the loop of the ''a'' in ''æ'' in some scripts, rather than as an ogonek.<ref name=benes/>
The e caudata first appears in a few uncial and half uncial manuscripts of the 6th century AD and was first used widely in 7th century Italian and Spanish uncial manuscripts; its use spread to Germany and the British Isles in the late 7th and early 8th centuries and to France in the late 8th century. In manuscripts of the 7th and 8th centuries, ''ae'', ''æ'', and ''ę'' are all common. By the 10th century the e caudata had mostly replaced the digraph ''ae'', and it remained the most common way of representing the phoneme ''ae'' until the 12th century. However, its use remained uneven, as it was used less frequently in texts which used fewer abbreviations for the sake of greater clarity or formality, such as those written in Carolingian minuscule. E-caudata-like diacritics were also sometimes used on ligatures including an ''e''; for instance, the letters ''aet'' were sometimes represented by an ampersand with a loop or hook under it, or the letters ''quae'' by the abbreviation for ''que'' with a loop or hook under it. In the 12th century, the e caudata started to be replaced by the plain ''e'', which from then until the Renaissance remained the most common way of representing the phoneme ''ae'' in manuscripts.<ref name='benes'/>
In the Renaissance, the e caudata, along with the ligature ''æ'' and the digraph ''ae'', was reintroduced by humanists as part of an attempt to return to a more classical writing system,<ref name='ramminger'/> since they believed that the 11th and 12th century manuscripts they read were actually ancient Roman.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5xIP4UVqHZ8C&pg=PA134 |first=Elizabeth |last=Eisenstein |title=The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe |page=134 |edition=2nd |date=2005 |orig-date=1st edition published 1983 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521845434 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211122224913/https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=5xIP4UVqHZ8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA134 |archive-date=2021-11-22 }}</ref> The e caudata was introduced on this basis by Coluccio Salutati<ref name='ramminger'>{{cite book |chapter-url=http://ramminger.userweb.mwn.de/biblio_lrz/ramminger_neolatin_character_and_development.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160624012540/ramminger.userweb.mwn.de/biblio_lrz/ramminger_neolatin_character_and_development.pdf |archive-date=2016-06-24 |first=Johann |last=Ramminger |page=27 |chapter=NEO-LATIN: CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT |title=Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World |publisher=Koninklijke Brill |editor-first1=Philip |editor-last1=Ford |editor-first2=Jan |editor-last2=Bloemendal |editor-first3=Charles |editor-last3=Fantazzi }}</ref> and was used frequently in humanist minuscule<ref>{{cite book |first=B. L. |last=Ullman |title=THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF HUMANISTIC SCRIPT |date=1960 |publisher={{interlanguage link|Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura|it|Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura|de|Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura}} }}</ref> and occasionally in Gothic script during the Renaissance.<ref>{{cite book |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211122213621/https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=t_KoaIkzUqEC&oi=fnd&pg=PA106 |archive-date=2021-11-22 |url-status=live |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t_KoaIkzUqEC&pg=PA106 |first=Albert |last=Derolez |page=106 |title=The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century |date=2003 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521803151 }}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *[http://www.ucc.ie/celt/index.html CELT, a corpus of Celtic texts]
Category:Latin-script ligatures Category:Latin letters with diacritics Category:Old Norse Category:Palaeographic letters Category:Vowel letters