D, or d, is the fourth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is dee (pronounced ), plural dees.["D" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "dee", op. cit.]
History
The Semitic letter Daleth may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door.[Rex Wallace (2008) πππ πππππ π Zikh Rasna: A Manual of the Etruscan Language and Inscriptions] the letter was archaic but still retained. The equivalent Greek letter is delta, Ξ.
The lower case (lower-case) form of 'd' consists of a lower-story left bowl and a stem ascender. It most likely developed by gradual variations on the upper case (capital) form 'D', and is now composed as a stem with a full lobe to the right. In handwriting, it was common to start the arc to the left of the vertical stroke, resulting in a serif at the top of the arc. This serif was extended while the rest of the letter was reduced, resulting in an angled stroke and loop. The angled stroke slowly developed into a vertical stroke.
Use in writing systems
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English
In English, generally represents the voiced alveolar plosive .
The letter is the letter frequency in the English language.
Other languages
In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, generally represents the voiced alveolar or voiced dental plosive .
In the Vietnamese alphabet, it represents the sound in northern dialects or in southern dialects. In Fijian language, it represents a prenasalized stop .
In some languages where voiceless unaspirated stops contrast with voiceless aspirated stops, represents an unaspirated , while represents an aspirated . Examples of such languages include Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic, Navajo language and the pinyin transliteration of Standard Chinese.
Other systems
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, represents the voiced alveolar plosive .
Other uses
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In the hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system, D is a number that corresponds to the number 13 in decimal (base 10) counting.
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The Roman numeral D represents the number 500.
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Unit prefix d, meaning one tenth.
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D is the grade below C but above E/F in the school grading system.
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D is the international vehicle registration code for Germany (also .de as its top-level domain).
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In Cantonese: Because the lack of Unicode CJK support in early computer systems, many Hong Kongers and Singaporeans used the capitalized D to represent out=c.
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In the Gregory-Aland system for cataloging Biblical manuscripts, D can refer to documents in the Western text-type tradition, either Codex Bezae or Codex Claromontanus.
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d. is the standard abbreviation for the Penny (British pre-decimal coin) (from )
Related characters
Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
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Ζ Ι : African D
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Γ Γ° : Latin letter Eth
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D with : Δ Δ Tau gallicum
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Phonetic symbols related to D:
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Symbols related to D used in the IPA:
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Symbols related to D used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet:
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Superscript IPA letters: π π π
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Other phonetic symbols related to D: Θ‘
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Ζ Ζ : D with topbar
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πΌ₯: D with mid-height left hook β Used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language.
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κΉ κΊ: Insular script D is used in various phonetic contexts
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
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π€: Semitic letter Dalet, from which the following symbols originally derive:
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Ξ Ξ΄: Greek alphabet letter Delta, from which the following symbols originally derive:
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: Coptic alphabet letter Delta
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Π Π΄: Cyrillic letter De
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π: Old Italic D, the ancestor of modern Latin D
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: Runes letter dagaz, which is possibly a descendant of Old Italic D
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: Runic letter thurisaz, another possible descendant of Old Italic D
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: Gothic alphabet letter daaz, which derives from Greek Delta
Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations
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β«: Δα»ng sign
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β
: Unicode symbol for d used as derivative symbol
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β: the partial derivative symbol,
Other representations
Computing
The Latin letters and have
Unicode encodings and . These are the same
as those used in
ASCII and ISO 8859. There are also precomposed character encodings for and with diacritics, for most of those listed above; the remainder are produced using combining diacritics.
Variant forms of the letter have unique code points for specialist use: the alphanumeric symbols set in mathematics and science, plosive sounds in linguistics and halfwidth and fullwidth forms for legacy CJK characters font compatibility.
Other
In British Sign Language (BSL), the letter 'd' is indicated by signing with the right hand held with the index and thumb extended and slightly curved, and the tip of the thumb and finger held against the extended index of the left hand.
External links
