D, or d, is the fourth

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 ...

in the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and th ...

, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''dee'' (pronounced ), plural ''dees''.

History

The Semitic letter Dāleth may have developed from the

logogram In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, ...

for a fish or a door. There are many different Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic,

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

and

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, the letter represented ; in the

Etruscan alphabet The Etruscan alphabet was the alphabet used by the Etruscans, an ancient civilization of central and northern Italy, to write their language, from about 700 BC to sometime around 100 AD. The Etruscan alphabet derives from the Euboean alphabet u ...

the letter was archaic, but still retained (see letter B). The equivalent

Greek letter The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...

is Delta, Δ.

Architecture

The

minuscule 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 ...

(lower-case) form of 'd' consists of a lower-story left

bowl A bowl is a typically round dish or container generally used for preparing, serving, 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. This makes ...

and a stem ascender. It most likely developed by gradual variations on the majuscule (capital) form 'D', and today now composed as a stem with a full Typeface anatomy#Strokes, lobe to the right. In handwriting, it was common to start the arc to the left of the vertical stroke, resulting in a serif at the top of the arc. This serif was extended while the rest of the letter was reduced, resulting in an angled stroke and loop. The angled stroke slowly developed into a vertical stroke.

Use in writing systems

In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, and in the International Phonetic Alphabet, generally represents the voiced alveolar plosive, voiced alveolar or voiced dental plosive . However, in the Vietnamese alphabet, it represents the sound in northern dialects or in southern dialects. (See D with stroke and Dz (digraph).) In Fijian language, Fijian it represents a prenasalized consonant, prenasalized stop . In some languages where voice (phonetics), voiceless aspiration (phonetics), unaspirated stops contrast with voiceless aspirated stops, represents an unaspirated , while represents an aspirated . Examples of such languages include Icelandic language, Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic, Navajo language, Navajo and the Pinyin transliteration of Standard Chinese, Mandarin.

Other uses

* The Roman numeral D represents the number 500 (number), 500. * D is the grade below C but above E in the Grading (education), school grading system. * D is the International vehicle registration code for Germany (see also .de). * In Cantonese language, Cantonese: Because the lack of Unicode CJK support in the early computer system, many Hong Kongers and Singaporeans used the capitalized D to represent (lit. a little). * d. is the standard abbreviation for the Penny (British pre-decimal coin) (from la, denarius)

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

*Ɖ ɖ : African D *Ð ð : Ð, Latin letter Eth *D with diacritics: Đ, Đ đ Ꟈ, Ꟈ ꟈ Ɗ, Ɗ ɗ Dot (diacritic), Ḋ ḋ Ḍ, Ḍ ḍ Ḑ, Ḑ ḑ Circumflex, Ḓ ḓ Ď, Ď ď Macron below, Ḏ ḏ *Phonetic symbols related to D: ** Symbols related to D used in the International Phonetic Alphabet, IPA: ** Symbols related to D used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet: ** International Phonetic Alphabet#Superscript IPA, Superscript IPA letters: 𐞋 𐞌 𐞍 ** Other phonetic symbols related to D: ȡ ᵭ ᶁ ᶑ *Ƌ ƌ : Ƌ, D with topbar *𝼥 : D with mid-height left hook - Used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language. *Ꝺ ꝺ : Insular script, Insular D is used in various phonetic contexts

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

*𐤃 : Phoenician alphabet, Semitic letter Dalet, from which the following symbols originally derive **Δ δ : Greek alphabet, Greek letter Delta (letter), Delta, from which the following symbols originally derive *** : Coptic alphabet, Coptic letter Delta ***Д д : Cyrillic letter De (Cyrillic), De ***𐌃 : Old Italic script, Old Italic D, the ancestor of modern Latin D **** : Runes, Runic letter dagaz, which is possibly a descendant of Old Italic D **** Runic letter thurisaz, another possible descendant of Old Italic D *** : Gothic alphabet, Gothic letter daaz, which derives from Greek Delta

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

*₫ : Vietnamese đồng, Đồng sign *∂ : ∂, the partial derivative symbol,

\partial

Code points

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

Other representations

In British Sign Language (BSL), the letter 'd' is indicated by signing with the right hand held with the index and thumb extended and slightly curved, and the tip of the thumb and finger held against the extended index of the left hand.

Use as a number

In the hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system, D is a number that corresponds to the number 13 in decimal (base 10) counting. In the binary number, binary (base 2) numbering system, D is denoted by 1101.

References

External links

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