D

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the letter of the alphabet. For other uses, see D (disambiguation).
For technical reasons, "D#" redirects here. For D-sharp, see D (disambiguation).

ISO basic
Latin alphabet

Aa Bb Cc Dd
Ee Ff Gg Hh
Ii Jj Kk Ll
Mm Nn Oo Pp
Qq Rr Ss Tt
Uu Vv Ww Xx
Yy Zz

v
t
e

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 Writing cursive forms of D

D (named dee /di/[1]) is the fourth letter of the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin
alphabet.

Contents
[hide]

1History
2Use in writing systems
3Other uses
4Related characters
o 4.1Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
o 4.2Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
o 4.3Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations
5Computing codes
6Other representations
7References
8External links

History[edit]

Egyptian hieroglyph Phoenician Greek Etruscan Roman

door daleth Delta D D

The Semitic letter Dleth may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are
many different Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek and
Latin, the letter represented /d/; in the Etruscan alphabet the letter was superfluous but still retained
(see letter B). The equivalent Greek letter is Delta, .
The minuscule (lower-case) form of 'd' consists of a loop and a tall vertical stroke. It developed by
gradual variations on the majuscule (capital) form. 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[edit]

The letter D, standing for "Deutschland" (German for "Germany"), on a boundary stone at the border between
Austria and Germany.

In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, and in the International Phonetic Alphabet, d
generally represents the voiced alveolar or voiced dental plosive /d/. However, in the Vietnamese
alphabet, it represents the sound /z/ in northern dialects or /j/ in southern dialects. (See D with
stroke and Dz (digraph).) In Fijian it represents a prenasalized stop /nd/.[2] In some languages
where voiceless unaspirated stops contrast with voiceless aspirated stops, d represents an
unaspirated /t/, while t represents an aspirated /t/. Examples of such languages
include Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic, Navajo and the Pinyin transliteration of Mandarin.

Other uses[edit]
The Roman numeral represents the number 500.[3]
D is the grade below C but above E in the school grading system.

Related characters[edit]
Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet [edit]

: Latin letter Eth

D with diacritics:
IPA-specific symbols related to D:
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets[edit]

: Semitic letter Dalet, from which the following symbols originally derive
: Greek letter Delta, from which the following symbols originally derive
: Coptic letter Delta
: Cyrillic letter De
: Old Italic D, the ancestor of modern Latin D
: Runic letter dagaz, which is possibly a descendent of Old Italic D
 Runic letter thurisaz, another possible descendent of Old Italic D
: Gothic letter daaz, which derives from Greek Delta

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations[edit]

: ng sign

: the partial derivative symbol,

Computing codes[edit]

Character D d

Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D LATIN SMALL LETTER D

Encodings decimal hex decimal hex

Unicode 68 U+0044 100 U+0064

UTF-8 68 44 100 64

Numeric character reference D D d d

EBCDIC family 196 C4 132 84

ASCII 1 68 44 100 64

1
Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families
of encodings.

Other representations[edit]
NATO phonetic Morse code

Delta
 Braille
Signal flag Flag semaphore
dots-145

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.

References[edit]
1. Jump up^ "D" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New
International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "dee", op. cit.
2. Jump up^ Lynch, John (1998). Pacific languages: an introduction. University of Hawaii Press.
p. 97. ISBN 0-8248-1898-9.
3. Jump up^ Gordon, Arthur E. (1983). Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy. University of
California Press. p. 44. ISBN 9780520038981. Retrieved 3 October 2015.

External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has
media related to D.

The dictionary definition of D at Wiktionary

The dictionary definition of d at Wiktionary

[hide]

Latin alphabet

History

Spread

Romanization

Roman numerals
phabet

Letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet

Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu
Letter D with diacritics
Dd

ets
cters in Unicode

Diacritics

Palaeography
Categories:
ISO basic Latin letters