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| History | |
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⟨B⟩ may have started as a pictogram of the floorplan of a house in Egyptian hieroglyphs. By 1050 BC, the Phoenician alphabet's letter had a linear form that served as the beth.
Egyptian hieroglyph
cottage
Phoenician
beth
Greek
Beta
Etruscan
B
Roman
B
Tags:Ee,Oo,Tt,Pictogram, | |
| Typography | |
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The modern lowercase ⟨b⟩ derives from later Roman times, when scribes began omitting the upper loop of the capital.
Blackletter B
Uncial B
Modern Roman B
Modern Italic B
Modern Script B
Tags:Pp, | |
| Usage | |
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In English and most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, ⟨b⟩ denotes the voiced bilabial plosive /b/, as in bib. In English it is sometimes silent; most instances are derived from old monosyllablic words with the b final and immediately preceded by an m, such as lamb and bomb; a few are examples of etymological spelling to make the word more like its Latin original, such as debt or doubt. In Estonian, Icelandic, and in Chinese, ⟨b⟩ does not denote a voiced consonant; instead, it represents a voiceless /p/ that contrasts with either a geminated /pp/ (in Estonian) or an aspirated /pʰ/ (in Chinese, Danish and Icelandic), represented by ⟨p⟩. In Fijian ⟨b⟩ represents a prenasalized /mb/, whereas in Zulu and Xhosa it represents an implosive /ɓ/, in contrast to the digraph ⟨bh⟩ which represents /b/.
Finnish only uses ⟨b⟩ in loanwords.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA, ⟨b⟩ denotes the voiced bilabial plosive. Variants of ⟨b⟩ denote related bilabial consonants, like the voiced bilabial implosive and the bilabial trill. In X-SAMPA, capital ⟨B⟩ denotes the voiced bilabial fricative.
⟨B⟩ is also a musical note. Its value varies depending on the region; a ⟨b⟩ in Anglophone countries represents a note that is a semitone higher than the B note in Northern Continental Europe. (Anglophone B is represented in Northern Europe with ⟨H⟩.) Archaic forms of ⟨b⟩, the b quadratum (square b, ♮) and b rotundum (round b, ♭) remain in use for musical notation as the symbols for natural and flat, respectively.
In Contracted (grade 2) English braille, ⟨b⟩ stands for "but" when in isolation.
Tags:Ll,Mm,Nn,Ss,/,English,Etymological,Estonian,Icelandic,Zulu,Xhosa,Loanwords,Musical Note,Natural, | |
| Related letters and other similar characters | |
| 2>
Β β : Greek letter Beta
В в : Cyrillic letter Ve
Б б : Cyrillic letter Be
Ɓ ɓ : Latin letter B with hook
Ъ ъ : Cyrillic letter Yer (also known as the hard sign, back yer, or tvyordiy znak) is shaped like the letter b, but has no phonetic value on its own in modern East Slavic languages. The ъ serves as an orthographic device that indicates that the consonant preceding the ъ is not palatalized.
Ь ь : Cyrillic letter Soft sign (also known as the front yer, or myagkiy znak) is also shaped like the letter b, but has no phonetic value on its own in modern East Slavic languages. The ь serves as orthographic device that indicates that the consonant preceding the ь is softened or palatalized.
ẞ ß : German letter Eszett, originally a ligature of long s ⟨ſ⟩ with ⟨z⟩, now considered to stand for ⟨ss⟩.
ב : Hebrew letter Bet
␢ : Space
Tags:German Letter Eszett, | |
| Computing codes | |
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character
B
b
Unicode name
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B
LATIN SMALL LETTER B
character encoding
decimal
hex
decimal
hex
Unicode
66
0042
98
0062
UTF-8
66
42
98
62
Numeric character reference
B
B
b
b
EBCDIC family
194
C2
130
82
ASCII 1
66
42
98
62
1 and all encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Tags:Ii, | |
| References | |
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^ "B" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "bee", op. cit.
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| External links | |
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Media related to B at Wikimedia Commons
The Wiktionary entry for B
The Wiktionary entry for b
The ISO basic Latin alphabet
v
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 B with diacritics
Ḃḃ
Ḅḅ
Ḇḇ
Ƀƀ
Ɓɓ
Ƃƃ
ᵬ
ᶀ
Related
History
Palaeography
Derivations
Diacritics
Punctuation
Numerals
Unicode
List of letters
ISO/IEC 646
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=B&oldid=470867135"
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