Avestan Ne: The Letter in the Avestan Alphabet

The sound is a plain n, made with the tongue against the upper teeth and the air released through the nose. It is among the most frequent consonants in the texts. The nasals are where the alphabet's habit of building in series is easiest to see. The velar nasal has palatalised and rounded partners exactly as the velar fricative does, and the dental nasal has a palatal partner and a positionally restricted one, so the group is a small grid rather than a list. It stands thirty-eighth in the alphabet as a whole and twenty-second of the thirty-eight consonants, between Avestan Ngve and Avestan Nye. That position is not arbitrary. The sequence follows a scheme, vowels before consonants and consonants by place of articulation, and each letter's place in it is a statement about the sound.

Zoroastrian worship treats the correct sounding of the Avesta as part of the act itself. A priest is expected to produce the words as they have been received, and a sign that could stand for either of two sounds would put that in doubt. The size of this letter list follows from the requirement and not from any love of complication. A reciter using this alphabet is not being taught the text. The priesthood that used it already knew the Avesta by heart, and the page served as a check on memory rather than as a substitute for it, which is why the script records fine detail a learner would never need.