Đ (lowercase: đ,
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...
), known as crossed D or dyet, is a letter formed from the base character
D/d overlaid with a
crossbar. Crossing was used to create
eth (ð), but eth has an
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 ...
as its base whereas ''đ'' is based on the straight-backed roman ''d,'' like in the
Sámi languages
The Sámi languages ( ), also rendered in English language, English as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Indigenous Sámi peoples in Northern Europe (in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwest ...
and
Vietnamese. Crossed ''d'' is a letter in the alphabets of several languages and is used in
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
as a
voiced dental fricative
The voiced dental fricative is a consonant sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the ''th'' sound in ''father''. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is eth, or and was taken from the Old Engl ...
.
Appearance
In the lowercase, the crossbar is usually drawn through the
ascender, but when used as a phonetic symbol it may be preferred to draw it through the
bowl
A bowl is a typically round dish or container generally used for preparing, serving, storing, or consuming food. The interior of a bowl is characteristically shaped like a spherical cap, with the edges and the bottom, forming a seamless curve ...
, in which case it is known as a barred ''d''.
In some African languages' orthographies, such as that of
Moro, the barred ''d'' is preferred.
In the uppercase, the crossbar normally crosses just the left stem, but in Vietnamese and Moro it may sometimes cross the entire letter.
[Example: ]
The ''DE'' ligature should not be confused with the ''Đ''. That ligature was used stylistically in pre-19th century Spanish as a contraction for , as a D with an E superimposed. For example,
DE .
Uses by language
African languages
A lowercase ''đ'' appeared alongside a lowercase
retroflex D in a 1982 revision of the
African reference alphabet
The African Reference Alphabet is a largely defunct continent-wide guideline for the creation of Latin alphabets for African languages. Two variants of the initial proposal (one in English and a second in French) were made at a 1978 UNESCO-organi ...
. This revision of the alphabet eliminated uppercase forms, so there was no conflict between ''ɖ'' and ''đ''.
Kven
The letter ''Đ'', which is not used in
standard Finnish, became used in
Kven language
Kven ( or ; or ; or ; ) is a Finnic language or a group of Finnish dialects spoken in the northernmost parts of Norway by the Kven people. For political and historical reasons, it received the status of a minority language in 2005 within the ...
texts in the early 2020's, with its users as of March 2025 including the
Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection (e.g. '),
NRK (e.g. '), and Kainun Institutti (e.g. ').
Latin
''Đ'' was used in
Medieval Latin
Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. It was also the administrative language in the former Western Roman Empire, Roman Provinces of Mauretania, Numidi ...
to mark
abbreviation
An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening (linguistics), shortening, contraction (grammar), contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened for ...
s of words containing the letter ''d''. For example, could stand for "of the heirs". Similar crossbars were added to other letters to form abbreviations.
South Slavic languages
The letter Đ/đ is used to write the
voiced alveolo-palatal affricate, , similar to the in "jam".
The crossed ''d'' was introduced by the Serbian
philologist
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...
Đuro Daničić in 1878 for use in
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...
in his ''Dictionary of the Croatian or Serbian Language'', replacing the older digraphs ''dj'' and ''gj''.
[Maretić, Tomislav. ''Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga književnog jezika'', p. 14-15. 1899.] Daničić modeled the letter after the
Icelandic and
Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...
letter
eth, albeit representing a different sound. In 1892 it was officially introduced in
Croatia
Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...
n and
Slavonia
Slavonia (; ) is, with Dalmatia, Croatia proper, and Istria County, Istria, one of the four Regions of Croatia, historical regions of Croatia. Located in the Pannonian Plain and taking up the east of the country, it roughly corresponds with f ...
n schools (in the
Habsburg
The House of Habsburg (; ), also known as the House of Austria, was one of the most powerful dynasties in the history of Europe and Western civilization. They were best known for their inbreeding and for ruling vast realms throughout Europe d ...
Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia
The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia (; or ; ) was a nominally autonomous kingdom and constitutionally defined separate political nation within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was created in 1868 by merging the kingdoms of Kingdom of Croatia (Habs ...
where the
Croatian language
Croatian (; ) is the standard language, standardised Variety (linguistics)#Standard varieties, variety of the Serbo-Croatian pluricentric language mainly used by Croats. It is the national official language and literary standard of Croatia, o ...
was official) and so definitively added to
Gaj’s Latin alphabet.
The letter thereafter gradually entered daily use,
spreading throughout
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...
and then to
Macedonian (its Latin transliterations are heavily influenced by Serbo-Croatian from the Yugoslav period).
The crossed ''d'' is today considered a distinct letter, and is placed between
Dž and
E in
alphabetical order
Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is ...
. Its
Cyrillic
The Cyrillic 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 countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...
equivalent is
Ђ ђ.
Its partial equivalent in
Macedonian is
Ѓ ѓ (because only some dialects contain the sound). When a true ''đ'' is not available or desired, it is
transcribed as ''dj'' in modern Serbo-Croatian, and as ''gj'' in Macedonian. The use of ''dj'' in place of ''đ'' used to be more common in Serbo-Croatian texts, but it is falling out of practice.
Sámi languages
In the present-day orthographies of
Northern Sámi,
Inari Sámi and
Skolt Sámi
Skolt Sámi (, , ; or , , ) is a Sámi languages, Sámi language that is spoken by the Skolts, with approximately 300 speakers in Finland, mainly in Sevettijärvi and approximately 20–30 speakers of the (Notozero) dialect in an area surround ...
, ''đ'' represents the fricative . It is considered a distinct letter and placed between
D and
E in
alphabetical order
Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is ...
.
Vietnamese
''Đ'' is the seventh letter of the
Vietnamese alphabet
The Vietnamese alphabet (, ) is the modern writing script for the Vietnamese language. It uses the Latin script based on Romance languages like French language, French, originally developed by Francisco de Pina (1585–1625), a missionary from P ...
, after ''D'' and before ''E''. Traditionally, digraphs and trigraphs like ''CH'' and ''NGH'' were considered letters as well, making ''Đ'' the eighth letter. ''Đ'' is a letter in its own right, rather than a ligature or letter-diacritic combination; therefore, ''đá'' would come after ''dù'' in any alphabetical listing.
''Đ'' represents a
voiced alveolar implosive
The voiced alveolar implosive is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The IPA symbol is lowercase letter ''d'' with a rightward hook protru ...
() or, according to
Thompson (1959), a
preglottalized voiced alveolar stop ().
Whereas ''D'' is pronounced as some sort of dental or alveolar stop in most Latin alphabets, an unadorned ''D'' in Vietnamese represents either (Hanoian) or (Saigonese).
The Vietnamese alphabet was formally described for the first time in the 17th-century text , attributed to a Portuguese Jesuit missionary, possibly
Francisco de Pina
Francisco de Pina (; 1585 – 1625) was a Portuguese Jesuit interpreter, missionary and priest, credited with creating the first Latin script, Latinized script of the Vietnamese language, which the modern Vietnamese alphabet is based on.
Biograp ...
or Filipe Sibin. This passage about the letter ''Đ'' was later incorporated into
Alexandre de Rhodes' seminal :
On older typewriters, was located where would be in the French
AZERTY
AZERTY ( ) is a specific layout for the characters of the Latin alphabet on typewriter keys and computer keyboards. The layout takes its name from the first six letters to appear on the first row of alphabetical keys; that is, ( ). Like oth ...
layout. Alternatively, a hyphen can be
overstruck onto a D.
On computers without support for a Vietnamese
character set
Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using computers. The numerical values that make up a c ...
or
Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
, ''Đ'' is encoded as
DD
and ''đ'' as
dd
according to the
Vietnamese Quoted-Readable standard. Vietnamese computer users typically input ''Đ'' as in the
Telex
Telex is a telecommunication
Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communica ...
and VIQR input methods or as in the
VNI input method. In the absence of an input method, the
TCVN 6064:1995 and
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...
Vietnamese keyboard layouts map ZA0-09 ( on a U.S. keyboard) to ''đ'', or ''Đ'' when holding down . The Windows layout also maps ZA0-11 () to ₫.
Other modes of communication also have dedicated representations of ''Đ''. In
Vietnamese Braille, it is , which corresponds to ''D'' in
French Braille
French Braille is the original braille alphabet, and the basis of :Innovative braille scripts, almost :French-ordered braille scripts, all others. The collation, alphabetic order of French has become the basis of the international braille conven ...
. In the
Vietnamese manual alphabet, ''Đ'' is produced by touching the thumb to the index finger. In
Morse code
Morse code is a telecommunications method which Character encoding, encodes Written language, text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code i ...
, it is rendered – · · – · ·, corresponding to Telex's "DD".
Spanish
The Spanish language uses Đ as a ligature of the word "de" (Spanish for "of"). It is rarely typed, but commonly used on signs and in handwritten text.
File:DE ligature.JPG, Sign with the letter Đ, in Oaxaca, Mexico
File:DE ligature.svg, Spanish letter Đ, in the font Coruña
File:Coat_of_arms_of_Chihuahua.svg, Spanish letter Đ used on the Coat of Arms of the State of Chihuahua Mexico.
Other uses
Phonetic transcription
The lowercase ''đ'' is used in some
phonetic transcription
Phonetic transcription (also known as Phonetic script or Phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phonetics'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the ...
schemes to represent a
voiced dental fricative
The voiced dental fricative is a consonant sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the ''th'' sound in ''father''. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is eth, or and was taken from the Old Engl ...
(English ''th'' in ''this'').
Eth (ð) is more commonly used for this purpose, but the crossed ''d'' has the advantage of being able to be typed on a standard
typewriter
A typewriter is a Machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an i ...
, by overlaying a
hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation.
The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (en dash , em dash and others), which are wider, or with t ...
over a ''d''.
Currency symbols
A minuscule form of the letter, đ, is the symbol of the
đồng, the currency of Vietnam, by a 1953 decree by
Hồ Chí Minh.
The
South Vietnamese đồng, on the other hand, was symbolized "Đ.", in majuscule. In Unicode, the Vietnamese đồng symbol is properly represented by , but is often used instead. In Vietnamese, the đồng sign is written after the amount in superscript, often underlined.
The uppercase form, Ð, is used as the currency symbol for the
cryptocurrency
A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it.
Individual coin ownership record ...
Dogecoin.
Chemistry
Dispersity
In chemistry, the dispersity is a measure of the heterogeneity of sizes of molecules or particles in a mixture. A collection of objects is called uniform if the objects have the same size, shape, or mass. A sample of objects that have an inconsi ...
is represented by the symbol Đ, and is a measure of the heterogeneity of sizes of molecules or particles in a mixture, referring to either molecular mass or degree of polymerization.
Disambiguation
In Japanese handwriting, the letter D may be written as to clearly distinguish it from the letter O or the digit 0. This is similar to writing
Z or 7 with a bar to distinguish them from 2 and 1 respectively.
Computer encoding
In Unicode, both crossed ''d'' and barred ''d'' are considered
glyph variants of U+0111.
Unicode has a distinct code point for the visually very similar capital
eth, Ð, U+00D0, which can lead to confusion.
As part of
WGL4, ''Đ'' and ''đ'' can be expected to display correctly even on older Windows systems.
See also
*
Eth (Ð, ð), used in the
Faroese and
Icelandic languages
*
African D (Ɖ, ɖ)
*
I with bar (Ɨ, ɨ)
*
U with bar (Ʉ, ʉ)
Notes
References
{{Latin script, D, stroke
Palaeography
South Slavic languages
Sámi languages
Vietnamese language
Vietnamese alphabets
D stroke
D stroke