De (Д д; italic: ''Д д'') is a letter of the
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...
. It commonly represents the
voiced dental stop , like the pronunciation of in "
door", except closer to the teeth. De is usually Romanized using the Latin letter
D.
History
The Cyrillic letter De was derived from the
Greek letter Delta (Δ δ).
In the
Early Cyrillic alphabet
The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is an alphabetic writing system that was developed in Medieval Bulgaria in the Preslav Literary School during the late 9th century. It is used to write the Chur ...
its name was (''dobro''), meaning "good".
In the
Cyrillic numeral system, De had a value of 4.
Form
The major graphic difference between De and its modern Greek equivalent lies in the two
descenders ("feet") below the lower corners of the Cyrillic letter. The descenders were borrowed from a Byzantine
uncial
Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for ...
shape of uppercase Delta.
De, like the
Cyrillic letter El, has two
typographical
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line spacing, letter spac ...
variants: an older variant where its top is pointed (like Delta), and a modern one (first used in mid-19th-century fonts) where it is square. Nowadays, almost all books and magazines are printed with fonts with the second variant of the letter; the first one is rather stylish and only a few popular text fonts use it (the best known example is "Baltika" designed in 1951-52 by V. G. Chiminova and others).
In italic (Russian) type, the lowercase form looks more like the lowercase Latin , a mirrored numeral
6 or a partial derivative symbol . Southern (Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian) typography may prefer a variant that looks like a single-storey lowercase Latin . Cursive lowercase De has the same two shapes, but with a different distribution: for example, the ''g''-shaped variant is a standard for schools in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus but also used for certain typefaces with OpenType features.
The (Russian-Ukrainian-Belarusian-Bulgarian) cursive form of capital De looks like Latin
D as the printed version is not comfortable enough to be written quickly. The Serbian cursive form is closer to the shape of a numeral "2" (identical to the form sometimes used for uppercase cursive Latin Q); this form is unknown in Russia.
Usage
It most often represents the
voiced dental plosive
The voiced alveolar, dental and postalveolar plosives (or stops) are types of consonantal sounds used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic s ...
. However, word-finally and before voiceless consonants, it represents a voiceless . Before a
palatalizing vowel, it represents .
Related letters and other similar characters
*Δ δ :
Greek letter Delta
*D d :
Latin letter D
*Л л :
Cyrillic letter El
*Ԁ ԁ :
Cyrillic letter Komi De
*G g :
Latin letter G
* ∂ :
Partial derivative symbol
* 𐍓 :
Computing codes
References
External links
*
*
{{Authority control
Cyrillic letters