2d Plus DOT

D, or d, is the fourth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''dee'' (pronounced ), plural ''dees''.

History

The Semitic letter Dāleth may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are many different Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek and Latin, the letter represented ; in the Etruscan alphabet the letter was archaic but still retained. The equivalent Greek letter is delta, Delta (letter), Δ.

The lower case, minuscule (lower-case) form of 'd' consists of a lower-story left Typeface anatomy#Strokes, bowl and a Typeface anatomy#Strokes, stem ascender. It most likely developed by gradual variations on the upper case, majuscule (capital) form 'D', and is now composed as a stem with a full Typeface anatomy#Strokes, 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

English

In English orthography, English, generally represents the voiced alveolar plosive .

The letter is the letter frequency, tenth most frequently used in the English language.

Other languages

In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, generally represents the voiced alveolar plosive, voiced alveolar or voiced dental plosive .

In the Vietnamese alphabet, it represents the sound in northern dialects or in southern dialects. In Fijian language, Fijian, it represents a prenasalized consonant, prenasalized stop .

In some languages where voice (phonetics), voiceless aspiration (phonetics), unaspirated stops contrast with voiceless aspirated stops, represents an unaspirated , while represents an aspirated . Examples of such languages include Icelandic language, Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic, Navajo language, Navajo and the pinyin transliteration of Standard Chinese, Mandarin.

Other systems

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, represents the voiced alveolar plosive .

Other uses

* In the hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system, D is a number that corresponds to the number 13 in decimal (base 10) counting.
* The Roman numeral D represents the number 500 (number), 500.
* Unit prefix d, meaning one tenth.
* D is the grade below C but above E/F in the Grading (education), school grading system.
* D is the international vehicle registration code for Germany (also .de as its top-level domain).
* In Cantonese: Because the lack of Unicode CJK support in early computer systems, many Hong Kongers and Singaporeans used the capitalized D to represent ().
* In the Biblical manuscript#Gregory-Aland, Gregory-Aland system for cataloging Biblical manuscripts, D can refer to documents in the Western text-type tradition, either Codex Bezae or Codex Claromontanus.
* d. is the standard abbreviation for the Penny (British pre-decimal coin) (from )

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

* Ɖ ɖ : African D
* Ð ð : Ð, Latin letter Eth
* D with diacritics: D with stroke, Đ đ Tau gallicum, Ꟈ ꟈ Ɗ, Ɗ ɗ Dot (diacritic), Ḋ ḋ Ḍ, Ḍ ḍ Ḑ, Ḑ ḑ Circumflex, Ḓ ḓ Ď, Ď ď Macron below, Ḏ ḏ
* Phonetic symbols related to D:
** Symbols related to D used in the International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA:
** Symbols related to D used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet:
** International Phonetic Alphabet#Superscript IPA, Superscript IPA letters: 𐞋 𐞌 𐞍
** Other phonetic symbols related to D: ȡ ᵭ ᶁ D with hook and tail, ᶑ
* Ƌ ƌ : Ƌ, D with topbar
* 𝼥: D with mid-height left hook – Used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language.
* Ꝺ ꝺ: Insular script, Insular D is used in various phonetic contexts

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

* 𐤃: Phoenician alphabet, Semitic letter Dalet, from which the following symbols originally derive:
** Δ δ: Greek alphabet, Greek letter Delta (letter), Delta, from which the following symbols originally derive:
*** : Coptic alphabet, Coptic letter Delta
*** Д д: Cyrillic letter De (Cyrillic), De
*** 𐌃: Old Italic script, Old Italic D, the ancestor of modern Latin D
**** : Runes, Runic letter dagaz, which is possibly a descendant of Old Italic D
**** : Runic letter thurisaz, another possible descendant of Old Italic D
*** : Gothic alphabet, Gothic letter daaz, which derives from Greek Delta

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

* ₫: Vietnamese đồng, Đồng sign
* ⅆ: Unicode symbol for d used as derivative symbol
* ∂: ∂, the partial derivative symbol, $\partial$

Other representations

Computing

The Latin letters and have Unicode encodings and . These are the same code points as those used in ASCII and ISO 8859. There are also precomposed character encodings for and with diacritics, for most of those listed #Related characters, above; the remainder are produced using combining diacritics.

Variant forms of the letter have unique code points for specialist use: the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols, alphanumeric symbols set in mathematics and science, plosive sounds in linguistics and halfwidth and fullwidth forms for legacy CJK characters, CJK 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.

References

External links

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{{Latin script, D}

ISO basic Latin letters