D

D or d is the fourth letter of the Latin

alphabet, used in the modern English D
alphabet, the alphabets of other western
European languages and
worldwide. Its name in English is dee
others
Dd
(pronounced /ˈdiː/), plural dees.[1]

History

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D 17/1/25, 3 12 PM
Page 1 of 8
:
 Δδ
!
Dd

Time period ~−700 – present

Descendants Ď Dž Dz Đ
Ð Ƌ Ꭰ ₫
∂
Sisters Д (‫)ד د ܕ‬ Դ դ
Ꭰ Ꮫ ደ
Other
Associated d(x)
graphs
Associated 4
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]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D 17/1/25, 3 12 PM
Page 2 of 8
:
 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/

Portuguese /d/

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/.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D 17/1/25, 3 12 PM
Page 3 of 8
:
 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 (lit. '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)

Related characters

The letter D, standing for

Descendants and related characters in
"Deutschland" (German for
the Latin alphabet "Germany"), on a boundary stone
at the border between Austria and
Ɖ ɖ : African D Germany.
Ð ð : Latin letter Eth
D with diacritics: Đ đ [11] Ɗ ɗ Ḋ ḋ Ḍ ḍ Ḑ ḑ Ḓ ḓ
ĎďḎḏ
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: [13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D 17/1/25, 3 12 PM
Page 4 of 8
:
 Other phonetic symbols related to D: ȡ[14] ᵭ[15] ᶁ[16] ᶑ[16]
Ƌ ƌ : D with topbar
: 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]
: Insular D is used in various phonetic contexts[18]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

!: 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
!: 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

!: 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D 17/1/25, 3 12 PM
Page 5 of 8
:
 Other
NATO phonetic Morse code

Delta ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄

Braille dots-
American
British manual 145
Signal flag manual
Flag semaphore alphabet (BSL Unified
alphabet (ASL
fingerspelling) English
fingerspelling)
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" (https://web.archive.org/web/20210829194452/https://issuu.com/kenwi
lsonmax/docs/chicken__health_issue/s/25385). issuu. Archived from the original (htt
ps://issuu.com/kenwilsonmax/docs/chicken__health_issue/s/25385) on 2021-08-29.
Retrieved 2021-07-06.
3. "Definition of DELTA" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/delta).
www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2022-05-03.
4. "Latin Alphabet" (https://www.sfu.ca/~ramccall/AncientandmodernLatinalphabet.pdf)
(PDF). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20101226155729/http://www.sfu.ca/~r
amccall/AncientandmodernLatinalphabet.pdf) (PDF) from the original on 2010-12-
26.
5. Rex Wallace (2008) "#$ %&'(& & Zikh Rasna: A Manual of the Etruscan Language
and Inscriptions
6. "Introduction to Old English" (https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/engol). The Linguistics
Research Center. Retrieved 2022-05-03.
7. Lynch, John (1998). Pacific languages: an introduction (https://books.google.com/bo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D 17/1/25, 3 12 PM
Page 6 of 8
:
 7. Lynch, John (1998). Pacific languages: an introduction (https://books.google.com/bo
oks?id=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" (https://u.
osu.edu/storageofdata/hexadecimal-number-system/). u.osu.edu. Retrieved
2022-05-20.
9. Gordon, Arthur E. (1983). Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy (https://archive.
org/details/illustratedintro0000gord). University of California Press. pp. 44 (https://ar
chive.org/details/illustratedintro0000gord/page/44). ISBN 9780520038981.
Retrieved 3 October 2015. "roman numerals."
10. "The Roman Alphabet in Cantonese" (https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=304
5). 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" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19179-n5044-t
au-gallicum.pdf) (PDF). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20190613190943/htt
p://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19179-n5044-tau-gallicum.pdf) (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" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2002/02141-n2419-uralic-pho
netic.pdf) (PDF). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20130819185337/http://ww
w.unicode.org/L2/L2002/02141-n2419-uralic-phonetic.pdf) (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" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2020/20252r-mod-ipa-a.
pdf) (PDF). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20210730010133/https://www.uni
code.org/L2/L2020/20252r-mod-ipa-a.pdf) (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" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2001/01347-n2366r.p
df) (PDF). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20130819124737/http://www.unico
de.org/L2/L2001/01347-n2366r.pdf) (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" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2003/03174r2-
mid-tilde.pdf) (PDF). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20130819204725/http://
www.unicode.org/L2/L2003/03174r2-mid-tilde.pdf) (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" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2004/04132-n2740-phonetic.p
df) (PDF). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20130819114855/http://www.unico
de.org/L2/L2004/04132-n2740-phonetic.pdf) (PDF) from the original on 2013-08-19.
17. Miller, Kirk; Rees, Neil (2021-07-16). "L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy
Malayalam" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21156-legacy-malayalam.pdf)
(PDF). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20210907191404/https://www.unicod
e.org/L2/L2021/21156-legacy-malayalam.pdf) (PDF) from the original on 2021-09-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D 17/1/25, 3 12 PM
Page 7 of 8
:
 e.org/L2/L2021/21156-legacy-malayalam.pdf) (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" (https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2006/06266-n3122-insular.
pdf) (PDF). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20130819182322/http://www.unic
ode.org/L2/L2006/06266-n3122-insular.pdf) (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 "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=D&oldid=1267663495"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D 17/1/25, 3 12 PM
Page 8 of 8
: