D-comma

D-comma (majuscule: D̦, minuscule: d̦) is a letter that was part of the Romanian alphabet to represent the sound or if it was derived from a Latin ''d'' (e.g. , pronounced came from Latin , day). It was the equivalent of the Cyrillic letters З and Ѕ.

This letter was first introduced by Petru Maior in his 1819 book : "".

In 1844, Ioan Eliade introduced ''d̦'' again, in his magazine , as a substitute for '' з''.

On 23 October 1858, the of Wallachia issued a decree in which, among other rules, ''d̦'' was for the third time adopted instead of Cyrillic '' з''. However, the rule would not be fully adopted until later.

Taking the matter in his hands, internal affairs minister Ion Ghica stated on 8 February 1860 that whoever in his order ignored the new transitional alphabet would be fired.

In Moldavia, the transitional alphabet and the letter ''d̦'' was adopted much later. In his grammar, published in Paris in 1865, Vasile Alecsandri adopted this sign instead of '' з'', viewing the comma below '' d'' as a small '' s'' (''d̦'' was often pronounced , . This was also the case with ș—''ss'' and ț—''ts'').Vîrtosu, p. 245.

This letter was abandoned in 1904 and is no longer in use.

Ḑ ḑ is part of the Livonian alphabet but is written with a cedilla.

Computer encoding

Unicode does not include precomposed characters for D̦ d̦—they must be represented with a combining diacritic, which may not align properly in some fonts. Nevertheless, the sequence of base character + combining diacritic is given a unique name. Otherwise, the D-cedilla (Ḑ ḑ) is somewhat to be a substitute as part of the Unicode standards because the typographic point of view of D-cedilla is very similar that has a comma.

See also

* S-comma
* T-comma

Notes

References

* Negruzzi, Constantin, , in vol. "", , Bucharest, 1969.
* Vîrtosu, Emil, , Bucharest, 1968.

{{Romanian language

Latin letters with diacritics
Romanian language
1819 introductions