P, or p, is the sixteenth

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 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 ''pee'' (pronounced ), plural ''pees''.

History

The Semitic Pê (mouth), as well as the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

Π or π ( Pi), and the

Etruscan __NOTOC__ Etruscan may refer to: Ancient civilization *The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy *Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization **Etruscan architecture **Etruscan art **Etruscan cities ** Etrusca ...

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 ...

letters that developed from the former alphabet, all symbolized , a

voiceless bilabial plosive The voiceless bilabial plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in most spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is p. Features Features o ...

Use in writing systems

English orthography English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and ...

and most other European languages, represents the sound . A common digraph in English is , which represents the sound , and can be used to transliterate ''

phi Phi (; uppercase Φ, lowercase φ or ϕ; grc, ϕεῖ ''pheî'' ; Modern Greek: ''fi'' ) is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In Archaic and Classical Greek (c. 9th century BC to 4th century BC), it represented an aspirated voicele ...

'' in loanwords from

. In German, the digraph is common, representing a labial affricate . Most English words beginning with are of foreign origin, primarily French, Latin and Greek; these languages preserve

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

initial *p. Native English cognates of such words often start with , since English is a

Germanic language The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, E ...

and thus has undergone Grimm's law; a native English word with initial would reflect Proto-Indo-European initial *b, which is so Proto-Indo-European_phonology#Labials, rare that its existence as a phoneme is disputed. However, native English words with non-initial are quite common; such words can come from either Kluge's law or the consonant cluster (PIE *p has been preserved after s). In the International Phonetic Alphabet, is used to represent the

Music

A bold italic letter is used in musical notation as a Dynamics (music), dynamic indicator for "quiet". It stands for the Italian language, Italian word ''piano''.

Related characters

Ancestors, descendants and siblings

The Latin letter P represents the same sound as the Greek letter Pi, but it looks like the Greek letter Rho (letter), Rho. *𐤐 : Phoenician alphabet, Semitic letter Pe (Semitic letter), Pe, from which the following symbols originally derive **Π π : Greek alphabet, Greek letter Pi ***𐌐 : Old Italic script, Old Italic and Old Latin P, which derives from Greek Pi, and is the ancestor of modern Latin P. The Roman P had this form (𐌐) on coins and inscriptions until the reign of Claudius, ca. 50 AD (see also Claudian letters). *** : Gothic alphabet, Gothic letter pertra/pairþa, which derives from Greek Pi ***П п : Cyrillic letter Pe (Cyrillic), Pe, which also derives from Pi ** : Coptic alphabet, Coptic letter Pi **Պ պ: Armenian alphabet, Armenian letter Pe (Armenian), Pe *P with diacritics: Acute accent, Ṕ ṕ Dot (diacritic), Ṗ ṗ P with stroke, Ᵽ ᵽ Ƥ, Ƥ ƥ Tilde, ᵱ ᶈ *Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to P: ** ** ** *_p : Subscript small p was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902

Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols

*₱ : Philippine peso sign *℘ : script letter P, see Weierstrass p *℗ : ℗, sound recording copyright symbol *Wikt:♇, ♇ : Pluto symbol *ꟼ : Reversed P was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for ''puella'' (girl) *Ꝑ ꝑ, Ꝓ ꝓ, Ꝕ, ꝕ : Various forms of P were used for medieval scribal abbreviations

History

Use in writing systems

Music

Related characters

Ancestors, descendants and siblings

Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols

Computing codes

Other representations

See also

References

External links