Coptic Small Letter Ni

Use a Coptic keyboard layout or a Unicode input method.

Coptic ni may be missing from a standard Latin keyboard layout. If ⲛ appears as an empty box, the font lacks Coptic coverage; choose a Coptic-capable font.

Some fonts give Coptic and Greek letters similar styles. Unicode treated Coptic as a stylistic variant of Greek until Unicode 4.1, when it received a separate block.

What sound does Coptic ni make?

It marks the consonant at the start of “net.” Coptic ni appears inside Coptic words; it has no standalone word meaning.

Coptic is the final historical stage of the Egyptian language. Its alphabet uses Greek uncial letters—rounded book forms—and adds signs adapted from Demotic, an older Egyptian script, for sounds Greek lacked. Greek-letter attempts to write Egyptian began after Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, in the late fourth century BCE.

The earliest Coptic writing experiments date to the first and second centuries CE; some survive as short explanatory notes in hieratic (cursive Egyptian writing) and Demotic papyri, including magical and astrological texts. Greek letters with vowel sounds helped record invocations more precisely, and a fuller Coptic alphabet emerged in the third century. Arabic gradually displaced Coptic in daily life after the Arab conquest; as of 2026, the Coptic Orthodox Church still maintains Coptic in worship.