Ñ

Ñ, ñ is a grapheme used in Spanish to indicate the sound which in the International Phonetic Alphabet is written [ɲ]. It corresponds approximately to the ny in English canyon. Perhaps the best known Spanish word in the English-speaking world that has this sound is mañana, 'tomorrow'. The symbol is also used in several, other languages using the Roman alphabet and in several Latin-script transcripctions, such as the standard transcription of Sanskrit, Pali and related languages.

Other languages also have this sound, but do not use the tilde (~) for it. For example, mañana in Portuguese is amanhã (where the til, as it is called in Portuguese, is modifying the a, not the n: the grapheme nh provides the [ɲ] sound). In Occitan and Vietnamese, [ɲ] is also written nh. In Catalan, ny is used, as in the local name for Catalonia, Catalunya. Italian and French use gn, as in lasagne and champagne (which has a different pronunciation from the English).