D

D, or d, is the fourth letter of the Latin alphabet, used

in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other D

Dd
western European languages and others worldwide. Its
name in English is dee (pronounced /ˈdiː/ ⓘ ), plural
dees. [1]

Usage
Writing system Latin script
Type Alphabetic
Language of Latin language
origin
Sound values [d] [t] [d͡ʒ] [ɗ]
[z~j] [ⁿd] [ɖ] [ɾ]
[ð~ð̞ ~ð̠ ˕ˠ] /diː/
In Unicode U+0044, U+0064
Alphabetical 4
position
History
Development

Δδ
𐌃
Dd
 Time period c. 700 BCE to present
History Descendants Ď Dž Dz Đ
Ð Ƌ Ꭰ ₫
∂
Sisters Д ‫ ד|د|ܕ‬Դ դ
Ꭰ Ꮫ ደ
Other
Associated d(x)
graphs
Associated 4; 500
numbers
Writing Left-to-right
direction

Egyptian hieroglyph Phoenician Western Greek Etruscan Latin

door, fish daleth Delta D D

The Semitic letter Dāleth may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door.[2] There are many
different Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek[3] and Latin,[4]
the letter represented /d/; in the Etruscan alphabet[5] the letter was archaic but still retained. The
equivalent Greek letter is delta, Δ.[3]

The minuscule (lower-case) form of 'd' consists of a lower-story left bowl and a stem ascender. It most
likely developed by gradual variations on the majuscule (capital) form 'D', and is now composed as a
stem with a full 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.[6]
Use in writing systems
Pronunciation of ⟨d⟩ by language

Orthography Phonemes
Standard Chinese (Pinyin) /t/

Dungan /d̥ /

English /d/
French /d/, silent

German /d/, /t/

Icelandic /t/
/d/
Portuguese
[d͡ʒ], allophone of /d/ before /i/, /ĩ/ and /j/ in some Brazilian dialects

Spanish /d/

Turkish /d/

Vietnamese /z/, /j/

English
In English, ⟨d⟩ generally represents the voiced alveolar plosive /d/.

The letter ⟨d⟩ is the tenth most frequently used in the English language.

Other languages
In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, ⟨d⟩ generally represents the voiced alveolar or voiced
dental plosive /d/.

In the Vietnamese alphabet, it represents the sound /z/ in northern dialects or /j/ in southern dialects. In
Fijian, it represents a prenasalized stop /ⁿd/.[7]

In some languages where voiceless unaspirated stops contrast with voiceless aspirated stops, ⟨d⟩
represents an unaspirated /t/, while ⟨t⟩ represents an aspirated /tʰ/. Examples of such languages include
Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic, Navajo and the pinyin transliteration of Mandarin.

Other systems
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨d⟩ represents the voiced alveolar plosive /d/.

Other uses
In the hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system, D is a number that corresponds to the
number 13 in decimal (base 10) counting.[8]
 The Roman numeral D represents the number
500.[9]
Unit prefix d, meaning one tenth.
D is the grade below C but above E/F in the school
grading system.
D is the international vehicle registration code for
Germany (also .de as its top-level domain).
In Cantonese: Because the lack of Unicode CJK
support in early computer systems, many Hong
Kongers and Singaporeans used the capitalized D
to represent 啲 (di1; 'a little').[10]
In the Gregory-Aland system for cataloging Biblical
manuscripts, D can refer to documents in the
Western text-type tradition, either Codex Bezae or
Codex Claromontanus.
d. is the standard abbreviation for the Penny (British
pre-decimal coin) (from Latin: denarius)
The letter D, standing for "Deutschland"
Related characters (German for "Germany"), on a boundary
stone at the border between Austria and
Germany.

Descendants and related characters in the

Latin alphabet
Ɖ ɖ : African D
Ð ð : Latin letter Eth
D with diacritics: Đ đ Ꟈ ꟈ[11] Ɗ ɗ Ḋ ḋ Ḍ ḍ Ḑ ḑ Ḓ ḓ Ď ď Ḏ ḏ
Phonetic symbols related to D:

Symbols related to D used in the IPA: ɖ ɗ

Symbols related to D used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet: ᴅ ᴰ ᵈ[12]
Superscript IPA letters: 𐞌 𐞍[13]
Other phonetic symbols related to D: ȡ[14] ᵭ[15] ᶁ[16] ᶑ[16]
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.[17]
Ꝺ ꝺ: Insular D is used in various phonetic contexts[18]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

𐤃: Semitic letter Dalet, from which the following symbols originally derive:
Δ δ: Greek letter Delta, from which the following symbols originally derive:

Ⲇ ⲇ: Coptic letter Delta

Д д: Cyrillic letter De
𐌃: Old Italic D, the ancestor of modern Latin D
 ᛞ: Runic letter dagaz, which is possibly a descendant of Old Italic D
ᚦ: Runic letter thurisaz, another possible descendant of Old Italic D
𐌳: Gothic letter daaz, which derives from Greek Delta

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

₫: Đồng sign
ⅆ: Unicode symbol for d used as derivative symbol
∂: the partial derivative symbol,

Other representations

Computing
The Latin letters ⟨D⟩ and ⟨d⟩ have Unicode encodings U+0044 D latin capital letter d and U+0064 d
latin small letter d. These are the same code points as those used in ASCII and ISO 8859. There are also
precomposed character encodings for ⟨D⟩ and ⟨d⟩ with diacritics, for most of those listed above; the
remainder are produced using combining diacritics.

Variant forms of the letter have unique code points for specialist use: the alphanumeric symbols set in
mathematics and science, plosive sounds in linguistics and halfwidth and fullwidth forms for legacy CJK
font compatibility.

Other
NATO phonetic Morse code

Delta ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄ ⓘ

American Braille dots-

British manual
Signal flag manual 145
Flag semaphore alphabet (BSL
alphabet (ASL Unified
fingerspelling)
fingerspelling) English Braille
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
1. "D" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New
International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "dee", op. cit.
2. "The letter D" ([Link]
x/docs/chicken__health_issue/s/25385). issuu. Archived from the original ([Link]
kenwilsonmax/docs/chicken__health_issue/s/25385) on 2021-08-29. Retrieved 2021-07-06.
3. "Definition of DELTA" ([Link] [Link]-
[Link]. Retrieved 2022-05-03.
4. "Latin Alphabet" ([Link] (PDF).
Archived ([Link]
[Link]) (PDF) from the original on 2010-12-26.
5. Rex Wallace (2008) 𐌆𐌉𐌙 𐌓𐌀𐌔𐌍𐌀 𐌀 Zikh Rasna: A Manual of the Etruscan Language and
Inscriptions
6. "Introduction to Old English" ([Link] The Linguistics Research
Center. Retrieved 2022-05-03.
7. Lynch, John (1998). Pacific languages: an introduction ([Link]
zYfV1jN3whUC&q=d+fijian+prenasalized&pg=PA97). University of Hawaii Press. p. 97.
ISBN 0-8248-1898-9.
8. "Hexadecimal Number System | There are Many Ways to Write Numbers" ([Link]
u/storageofdata/hexadecimal-number-system/). [Link]. Retrieved 2022-05-20.
9. Gordon, Arthur E. (1983). Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy ([Link]
ls/illustratedintro0000gord). University of California Press. pp. 44 ([Link]
llustratedintro0000gord/page/44). ISBN 9780520038981. Retrieved 3 October 2015. "roman
numerals."
10. "The Roman Alphabet in Cantonese" ([Link]
University of Pennsylvania. March 23, 2011. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
11. Everson, Michael; Lilley, Chris (2019-05-26). "L2/19-179: Proposal for the addition of four
Latin characters for Gaulish" ([Link]
pdf) (PDF). Archived ([Link]
L2/L2019/[Link]) (PDF) from the original on 2019-06-13.
12. Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for
the UCS" ([Link] (PDF).
Archived ([Link]
[Link]) (PDF) from the original on 2013-08-19.
13. Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (2020-11-08). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-
letters (a), pulmonic" ([Link] (PDF).
Archived ([Link]
[Link]) (PDF) from the original on 2021-07-30.
14. Cook, Richard; Everson, Michael (2001-09-20). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic
characters to the UCS" ([Link] (PDF).
Archived ([Link]
[Link]) (PDF) from the original on 2013-08-19.
15. Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with
Middle Tilde in the UCS" ([Link] (PDF).
Archived ([Link]
[Link]) (PDF) from the original on 2013-08-19.
16. Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters
to the UCS" ([Link] (PDF). Archived
([Link]
[Link]) (PDF) from the original on 2013-08-19.
17. Miller, Kirk; Rees, Neil (2021-07-16). "L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam" (ht
tps://[Link]/L2/L2021/[Link]) (PDF). Archived ([Link]
[Link]/web/20210907191404/[Link]
[Link]) (PDF) from the original on 2021-09-07.
18. Everson, Michael (2006-08-06). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek
symbol to the UCS" ([Link] (PDF).
Archived ([Link]
[Link]) (PDF) from the original on 2013-08-19.

External links
The dictionary definition of D at Wiktionary
The dictionary definition of d at Wiktionary

Retrieved from "[Link]