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B, or b, is the second
letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
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-lette ...
, 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 monophyletic lineage within the superfami ...
'' (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 Tlin ...
s.


History

Old English was originally written in runes, whose equivalent letter was beorc , meaning "
birch A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus ''Betula'' (), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech-oak family Fagaceae. The genus ''Betula'' contains 30 ...
". Beorc dates to at least the 2nd-century Elder Futhark, 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 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, which ...
' 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 alphabet The Old English Latin alphabet generally consisted of about 24 letters, and was used for writing Old English from the 8th to the 12th centuries. Of these letters, most were directly adopted from the Latin alphabet, two were modified Latin letters ( ...
s supplanted the earlier runes, whose use was fully banned under
King Canute Cnut (; ang, Cnut cyning; non, Knútr inn ríki ; or , no, Knut den mektige, sv, Knut den Store. died 12 November 1035), also known as Cnut the Great and Canute, was King of England from 1016, King of Denmark from 1018, and King of Norway ...
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 was increasingly distinguished, with upper- and lower-case B taking separate meanings. Following the advent of
printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The e ...
in the 15th century, Holy Roman Empire (Germany) and Scandinavia continued to use forms of blackletter (particularly
Fraktur Fraktur () is a calligraphic hand of the Latin alphabet and any of several blackletter typefaces derived from this hand. The blackletter lines are broken up; that is, their forms contain many angles when compared to the curves of the Antiq ...
), while England eventually adopted the humanist and antiqua scripts developed in
Renaissance Italy The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the tran ...
from a combination of Roman inscriptions and Carolingian texts. The present forms of the
English cursive Cursive (also known as script, among other names) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionalit ...
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 Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
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 = Gr ...
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 In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fi ...
, ''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 phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters. H-cluster reductions The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, inv ...
). 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 Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
, 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, rath ...
, whereas in Zulu and
Xhosa Xhosa may refer to: * Xhosa people, a nation, and ethnic group, who live in south-central and southeasterly region of South Africa * Xhosa language Xhosa (, ) also isiXhosa as an endonym, is a Nguni language and one of the official language ...
it represents an
implosive Implosive consonants are a group of stop consonants (and possibly also some affricates) with a mixed glottalic ingressive and pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism.''Phonetics for communication disorders.'' Martin J. Ball and Nicole Müller. Ro ...
, 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, 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 In linguistics, fortis and lenis ( and ; Latin for "strong" and "weak"), sometimes identified with tense and lax, are pronunciations of consonants with relatively greater and lesser energy, respectively. English has fortis consonants, such as the ...
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
, 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 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 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 The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...
, 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 sta ...
, 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 A chemical element is a species of atoms that have a given number of protons in their nuclei, including the pure substance consisting only of that species. Unlike chemical compounds, chemical elements cannot be broken down into simpler sub ...
. The blood-type B emoji (🅱️) was added in Unicode 6.0 in 2010, and became a popular internet meme in 2018 where letters would be replaced with the emoji.


Related characters


Ancestors, descendants and siblings

*𐤁 : Semitic 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, t ...
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 = Gr ...
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 Runes are the 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, and for specialised ...
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 Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
letter bercna, which derives from Greek Beta *
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
-specific symbols related to B: 𐞄 𐞅 *B with diacritics: 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 The baht (; th, บาท, ; sign: ฿; code: THB) is the official currency of Thailand. It is divided into 100 ''satang'' (, ). The issuance of currency is the responsibility of the Bank of Thailand. SWIFT ranked the Thai baht as the 10th-most ...
*₿ : Bitcoin *♭: 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 (base 16) numbering system, B is a number that corresponds to the number 11 in decimal (base 10) counting.


References


External links

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