F, or f, is the sixth letter of the Latin alphabet and many modern alphabets influenced by it, including the English alphabet and the alphabets of all other modern western European languages. Its name in English is ef (pronounced ), and the plural is efs.["F", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); "ef", "eff", "bee" (under "bee eff"), op. cit.]
History
The origin of ⟨F⟩ is the Semitic letter waw, which represented a sound like or . It probably originally depicted either a hook or a club. It may have been based on a comparable Egyptian hieroglyph such as (transliterated as ḥ(dj)): T3
The Phoenician form of the letter was adopted into Greek as a vowel, upsilon (which resembled its descendant ⟨Y⟩ but was also the ancestor of the Roman letters ⟨U⟩, ⟨V⟩, and ⟨W⟩); and, with another form, as a consonant, digamma, which indicated the pronunciation , as in Phoenician. Latin ⟨F⟩, despite being pronounced differently, is ultimately descended from digamma and closely resembles it in form.
After sound changes eliminated from most dialects of Greek (Doric Greek retained it), digamma was used only as a numeral. However, the Greek alphabet also gave rise to other alphabets, and some of these retained letters descended from digamma. In the Etruscan alphabet, ⟨F⟩ probably represented , as in Greek, and the Etruscans formed the digraph ⟨FH⟩ to represent . (At the time these letters were borrowed, there was no Greek letter that represented /f/: the Greek letter phi ⟨Φ⟩ then represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive , although in Modern Greek it has come to represent .) The Etruscan digraph may have been inspired by the rare use of ⟨ϜΗ⟩ in archaic Greek inscriptions for a dialectal sound like , e.g. in the reflexive pronoun ϜΗΕ, which corresponds to Classical ἕ hé (see ).[Compare: ]
When the Romans adopted the alphabet, they used ⟨V⟩ (from Greek upsilon) not only for the vowel , but also for the corresponding semivowel , leaving ⟨F⟩ available for . Initially, ⟨FH⟩ was also used for this sound in Latin, but the ⟨H⟩ was soon dropped. And so out of the various vav variants in the Mediterranean world, the letter F entered the Roman alphabet attached to a sound which the Greeks did not have. The Roman alphabet forms the basis of the alphabet used today for English and many other languages.
The lowercase ⟨f⟩ is not related to the visually similar long s, ⟨ſ⟩ (or medial s). The use of the long s largely died out by the beginning of the 19th century, mostly to prevent confusion with ⟨f⟩ when using a short mid-bar.
Use in writing systems
| + Pronunciation of by language
! Orthography
! Phonemes |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
English
In the English writing system is used to represent the sound , the voiceless labiodental fricative. It is often doubled at the end of words. Exceptionally, it represents the voiced labiodental fricative in the common word "of" and its derivatives.
F is the Letter frequency in the English language (after G, Y, P, B, V, K, J, X, Q, and Z), with a frequency of about 2.23% in words.
Other languages
In the writing systems of other languages, commonly represents , or .
-
In French orthography, is used to represent . It may also be silent at the end of words.
-
In Spanish orthography, is used to represent .
-
In Esperanto orthography, is used to represent .
-
In the Hepburn romanization of Japanese, is used to represent . This sound is usually considered to be an allophone of , which is pronounced in different ways depending upon its context; Japanese is pronounced as before .
-
In Welsh orthography, represents while represents .
-
In , is used primarily in words of foreign (Hellenic, Romance, or Germanic) origin.
-
In spoken Icelandic, in the middle of a word is often voiced to (e.g., Að sofa – to sleep).
Other systems
The International Phonetic Alphabet uses to represent the voiceless labiodental fricative.
Other uses
-
In the hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system, F is a number that corresponds to the number 15 in decimal (base 10) counting.
-
The italic letter is conventionally used to denote an arbitrary function. Closely on f with hook (ƒ).
-
A bold italic letter is used in musical notation as a dynamic indicator for "loud or strong". It stands for the Italian language word forte.
-
In countries such as the United States, the letter "F" is defined as a failure in terms of academic evaluation. Other countries that use this system include Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and the Netherlands.
-
The letter F has become an Internet meme, where it is used to pay respects. This use is derived from the 2014 video game , where in a quick-time event, protagonist Jack Mitchell must pay his respects to his friend Will Irons who fell in combat in a previous mission, represented by the player pressing F when playing the PC version. People on the Internet use the letter F sometimes in a genuine way to express respect, sadness, or condolences towards other Internet personalities, Internet memes, or other players on certain events.
Related characters
Ancestors, descendants and siblings
-
F with :
-
Ƒ ƒ
-
Ḟ ḟ
-
ᵮ
-
ᶂ
-
Ꞙ ꞙ : F with stroke is used in the Anthropos phonetic transcription system
-
ꬵ : Lenis F is used in the Teuthonista phonetic transcription system
-
f: Superscript "f", encoded as in the Phonetic Extensions Supplement block of Unicode, is used in some forms of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
-
ꜰ : Small capital F was used in the Icelandic First Grammatical Treatise to mark gemination
-
ꟳ : Modifier letter capital F
-
Ꝼ ꝼ : Insular script F is used in Norse and Old English contexts
-
ꟻ : Reversed F was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for filia (daughter) or femina (woman)
-
Ⅎ ⅎ : Claudian letters
-
𐤅: Semitic letter Waw, from which the following symbols originally derive:
-
Ϝ ϝ : Greek alphabet letter Digamma, from which F derives:
-
𐌅 : Old Italic V/F (originally used for V, in languages such as Etruscan and Oscan), which derives from Greek Digamma, and is the ancestor of modern Latin F
-
Y y : Latin letter Y, sharing its roots with F
-
V v : Latin letter V, also sharing its roots with F
-
U u : Latin letter U, which is descended from V
-
W w : Latin letter W, also descended from V
Ligatures and abbreviations
Other representations
Computing
These are the
for the forms of the letter in various systems:
Other
Notes
External links
