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De (Д д; italics: ''Д д'') is a letter of the
Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...
. De commonly represents the
voiced dental stop 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 that represents voiced dental, alveolar, and postalveolar plosiv ...
, like the pronunciation of in "door". De is romanised 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 a writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Slavic people living ...
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
descender In typography and handwriting, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font. For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the ''v'' c ...
s ("feet") below the lower corners of the Cyrillic letter. The descenders were borrowed from a Byzantine
uncial Uncial is a majuscule Glaister, Geoffrey Ashall. (1996) ''Encyclopedia of the Book''. 2nd edn. New Castle, DE, and London: Oak Knoll Press & The British Library, p. 494. script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to ...
shape of uppercase Delta. De, like the Cyrillic letter El, has two typographical 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 , 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 Russian schools. 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 . 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


Computing codes


References


External links

* * {{Authority control