HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

B, or b, is the second letter of the
Latin-script alphabet A Latin-script alphabet (Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet) is an alphabet that uses letters of the Latin script. The 21-letter archaic Latin alphabet and the 23-letter classical Latin alphabet belong to the oldest of this group. The 26-letter ...
, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''
bee Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyly, monophyletic lineage within the ...
'' (pronounced ), plural ''bees''. It represents the voiced bilabial stop in many languages, including English. In some other languages, it is used to represent other
bilabial consonant In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a labial consonant articulated with both lips. Frequency Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tlingi ...
s.


History

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
was originally written in
runes Runes are the letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, a ...
, whose equivalent letter was beorc , meaning " birch". Beorc dates to at least the 2nd-century
Elder Futhark The Elder Futhark (or Fuþark), also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples for Northwest Germanic dialects in the Migration Peri ...
, which is now thought to have derived from the
Old Italic alphabets The Old Italic scripts are a family of similar ancient writing systems used in the Italy, Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet, ...
' either directly or via Latin . The uncial and half-uncial introduced by the Gregorian and Irish missions gradually developed into the Insular scripts' . These Old English Latin alphabets supplanted the earlier runes, whose use was fully banned under King Canute in the early 11th century. The Norman Conquest popularised the
Carolingian The Carolingian dynasty (; known variously as the Carlovingians, Carolingus, Carolings, Karolinger or Karlings) was a Frankish noble family named after Charlemagne, grandson of mayor Charles Martel and a descendant of the Arnulfing and Pippin ...
half-uncial forms which latter developed into
blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
. Around 1300,
letter case Letter case is the distinction between the Letter (alphabet), letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain lang ...
was increasingly distinguished, with upper- and
lower-case Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
B taking separate meanings. Following the advent of printing in the 15th century, Holy Roman Empire (Germany) and Scandinavia continued to use forms of blackletter (particularly Fraktur), while England eventually adopted the humanist and antiqua scripts developed in Renaissance Italy from a combination of Roman inscriptions and Carolingian texts. The present forms of the English cursive B were developed by the 17th century. The Roman derived from the Greek capital
beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...
via its Etruscan and Cumaean variants. The Greek letter was an adaptation of the Phoenician letter bēt . The Egyptian hieroglyph for the consonant /b/ had been an image of a foot and calf , but bēt (Phoenician for "house") was a modified form of a Proto-Sinaitic
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
probably adapted from the separate hieroglyph Pr meaning "house". The Hebrew letter bet is a separate development of the Phoenician letter. By Byzantine times, the Greek letter came to be pronounced /v/, so that it is known in modern Greek as ''víta'' (still written ). The
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
letter ve represents the same sound, so a modified form known as be was developed to represent the Slavic languages' /b/. (Modern Greek continues to lack a letter for the voiced bilabial plosive and transliterates such sounds from other languages using the digraph/ consonant cluster , ''mp''.)


Use in writing systems


English

In English, denotes the voiced bilabial stop , as in ''bib''. In English, it is sometimes silent. This occurs particularly in words ending in , such as ''lamb'' and ''bomb'', some of which originally had a /b/ sound, while some had the letter added by analogy (see Phonological history of English consonant clusters). The in ''debt'', ''doubt'', ''subtle'', and related words was added in the 16th century as an etymological spelling, intended to make the words more like their Latin originals (''debitum'', ''dubito'', ''subtilis''). As /b/ is one of the sounds subject to Grimm's Law, words which have in English and other Germanic languages may find their cognates in other Indo-European languages appearing with , , or instead. For example, compare the various cognates of the word ''brother''. It is the seventh least frequently used letter in the English language (after V, K, J, X, Q, and Z), with a frequency of about 1.5% in words.


Other languages

Many other languages besides English use to represent a voiced bilabial stop. In
Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...
, Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic and Mandarin Chinese Pinyin, does not denote a voiced consonant. Instead, it represents a voiceless that contrasts with either a geminated (in Estonian) or an aspirated (in Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic and Pinyin) represented by . In Fijian represents a
prenasalised Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant such as ) that behave phonologically like single consonants. The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather t ...
, whereas in Zulu and Xhosa it represents an implosive , in contrast to the digraph which represents . Finnish uses only in
loanwords A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...
.


Phonetic transcription

In the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
, is used to represent the voiced bilabial stop
phone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into ele ...
. In phonological transcription systems for specific languages, /b/ may be used to represent a lenis phoneme, not necessarily voiced, that contrasts with fortis /p/ (which may have greater aspiration, tenseness or duration).


Other uses

B is also a musical note. In English-speaking countries, it represents Si, the 12th note of a chromatic scale built on C. In Central Europe and Scandinavia, "B" is used to denote
B-flat B-flat or B may refer to: * B (musical note) * B major * B minor B minor is a minor scale based on B, consisting of the pitches B, C, D, E, F, G, and A. Its key signature has two sharps. Its relative major is D major and its parallel ma ...
and the 12th note of the chromatic scale is denoted "H". Archaic forms of 'b', the ''b quadratum'' (square b, ) and ''b rotundum'' (round b, ) are used in
musical notation Music notation or musical notation is any system used to visually represent aurally perceived music played with instruments or sung by the human voice through the use of written, printed, or otherwise-produced symbols, including notation fo ...
as the symbols for '' natural'' and '' flat'', respectively. In Contracted (grade 2) English braille, 'b' stands for "but" when in isolation. In computer science, B is the symbol for byte, a unit of information storage. In engineering, B is the symbol for
bel BEL can be an abbreviation for: * The ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code for Belgium * ''BEL'' or bell character in the C0 control code set * Belarusian language, in the ISO 639-2 and SIL country code lists * Bharat Electronics Limited, an Indian stat ...
, a unit of
level Level or levels may refer to: Engineering *Level (instrument), a device used to measure true horizontal or relative heights *Spirit level, an instrument designed to indicate whether a surface is horizontal or vertical *Canal pound or level *Regr ...
. In chemistry, B is the symbol for
boron Boron is a chemical element with the symbol B and atomic number 5. In its crystalline form it is a brittle, dark, lustrous metalloid; in its amorphous form it is a brown powder. As the lightest element of the ''boron group'' it has th ...
, a chemical element. The blood-type B
emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversat ...
(🅱️) was added in Unicode 6.0 in 2010, and became a popular
internet meme An Internet meme, commonly known simply as a meme ( ), is an idea, behavior, style, or image that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. What is considered a meme may vary across different communities on the Internet ...
in 2018 where letters would be replaced with the emoji.


Related characters


Ancestors, descendants and siblings

*𐤁 :
Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...
letter Bet, from which the following symbols originally derive *Β β : Greek letter
Beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...
, from which B derives *Ⲃ ⲃ
Coptic Coptic may refer to: Afro-Asia * Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya * Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century * Coptic alphabet ...
letter Bēta, which derives from Greek Beta *В в :
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
letter Ve, which also derives from Beta *Б б : Cyrillic letter Be, which also derives from Beta *ʙ : A small capital B, used as the lowercase B in a number of alphabets during romanization *𐌁 : Old Italic B, which derives from Greek Beta *ᛒ : Runic letter
Berkanan Berkanan is the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name of the ''b'' rune , meaning "birch". In the Younger Futhark it is called Bjarkan in the Icelandic and Norwegian rune poems. In the Anglo-Saxon rune poem it is called ''beorc'' ("birch" or " popla ...
, which probably derives from Old Italic B *𐌱 : Gothic letter bercna, which derives from Greek Beta * IPA-specific symbols related to B: 𐞄
𐞅 The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
*B with
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s: Ƀ ƀ Ḃ ḃ Ḅ ḅ Ḇ ḇ Ɓ ɓ ᵬ ᶀ *Ꞗ ꞗ :
B with flourish B with flourish (Ꞗ, ꞗ) is the modern name for the third letter of the Middle Vietnamese alphabet, sorted between B and C. The B with flourish has a rounded hook that starts halfway up the stem (where the top of the bowl meets the ascender) ...
*ᴃ ᴯ B b : Barred B and various modifier letters are used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. *Ƃ ƃ : B with topbar


Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols

*␢ : *฿ : Thai baht *₿ :
Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...
*♭: The flat in music, mentioned above, still closely resembles lowercase b.


Code points

These are the code points for the forms of the letter in various systems : 1


Other representations


Use as a number

In the
hexadecimal In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of 16. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using 10 symbols, hexa ...
(base 16) numbering system, B is a number that corresponds to the number 11 in
decimal The decimal numeral system (also called the base-ten positional numeral system and denary or decanary) is the standard system for denoting integer and non-integer numbers. It is the extension to non-integer numbers of the Hindu–Arabic numeral ...
(base 10) counting.


References


External links

* * * * {{Latin script, B} ISO basic Latin letters