D

For technical reasons, :D redirects here. For the emoticon :D, see Emoticon.

For technical reasons, D# redirects here. For the musical note, see D♯ (musical note).

"Ⓓ" redirects here. For the U.S. political party using the enclosed D as its logo, see Democratic Party (United States).

For other uses of "D", see D (disambiguation).

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

D ( /ˈdiː/; named dee)^[1] is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.

History

Egyptian hieroglyph door	Phoenician daleth	Greek Delta	Etruscan D	Roman D

The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various 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, ‹Δ›.^{[citation needed]}

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.

Usage

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

In most languages using the Latin alphabet, ‹d› represents the voiced alveolar plosive /d/, but in the Vietnamese alphabet it represents the sound /z/ (pronounced /j/ in the southern variety). 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 /tʰ/. Examples of such languages include Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic, Navajo, and the Pinyin transliteration of Mandarin.

Related letters and other similar characters

• Đ đ : Latin letter D with stroke
• Ɗ ɗ : Latin letter D with hook
• Ð ð : Latin letter Eth
• Δ δ : Greek letter Delta
• Д д : Cyrillic letter De
• ∂ : the partial derivative symbol, $\part$

Computing codes

character	D		d
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D		LATIN SMALL LETTER D
character encoding	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	68	0044	100	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 and all encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Delta	–··

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	Braille

In British Sign Language (BSL), the letter ‹d› is indicated by signing with the right hand held with index and thumb extended and slightly curved and tip of thumb and finger held against extended index of 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. ^ Lynch, John (1998). Pacific languages: an introduction. University of Hawaii Press. p. 97. ISBN 0824818989. http://books.google.com/books?id=zYfV1jN3whUC&pg=PA97&dq=d+fijian+prenasalized#v=onepage&q=d%20fijian%20prenasalized&f=false. 

External links

• Media related to D at Wikimedia Commons
• The Wiktionary definition of D
• The Wiktionary definition of d

The ISO basic Latin alphabetv · d · e
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
Letter D with diacritics
Ďď	Ḋḋ	Ḑḑ	Ḍḍ	Ḓḓ	Ḏḏ	Đđ	Ɖɖ	Ɗɗ	Ƌƌ	ᵭ	ᶁ	ᶑ	ȡ	∂
Related
History Palaeography Derivations Diacritics Punctuation Numerals Unicode List of letters ISO/IEC 646