B
B | |
---|---|
B b | |
Usage | |
Writing system | Latin language |
Phonetic usage | |
Time period | unknown to present |
Descendants |
|
Sisters | |
Other | |
Other letters commonly used with | bv bh bp bm bf |
Associated numbers | 2 |
Writing direction | Left-to-Right |
ISO basic Latin alphabet |
---|
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz |
B, or b, is the second letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is bee (pronounced /ˈbiː/), plural bees.[1][2]
It represents the
voiced bilabial stop in many languages, including English. In some other languages, it is used to represent other bilabial consonants
.
History
Egyptian Pr |
Phoenician bēt |
Western Greek beta
|
Etruscan B |
Latin B |
---|---|---|---|---|
The Roman ⟨B⟩ derived from the
ב⟩ is a separate development of the Phoenician letter.[3]
By
Cyrillic letter ve ⟨В⟩ represents the same sound, so a modified form known as be ⟨Б⟩ was developed to represent the Slavic languages' /b/.[3] (Modern Greek continues to lack a letter for the voiced bilabial plosive and transliterates such sounds from other languages using the digraph/consonant cluster
⟨μπ⟩, mp.)
𐌁 ⟩ either directly or via Latin ⟨
⟩.
The
Renaissance Italy from a combination of Roman inscriptions and Carolingian texts. The present forms of the English cursive
B were developed by the 17th century.
Use in writing systems
Languages in italics are not usually written using the Latin alphabet | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Language | Dialect(s) | Pronunciation (IPA) | Environment | Notes |
Mandarin Chinese | Standard | /p/ | Pinyin romanization | |
English | /b/ | |||
French | /b/, /p/ | See French orthography | ||
German | /b/, /p/ | See German orthography | ||
Portuguese | /b/ | |||
Spanish | /b/ | |||
Turkish | /b/ |
English
In
Latin
originals (debitum, dubito, subtilis).
As /b/ is one of the sounds subject to
Germanic languages may find their cognates in other Indo-European languages appearing with ⟨bh⟩, ⟨p⟩, ⟨f⟩ or ⟨φ⟩ instead.[3] For example, compare the various cognates of the word brother. It is the seventh least frequently used letter in the English language (after V, K, J, X, Q, and Z
), with a frequency of about 1.5% in words.
Other languages
Many other languages besides English use ⟨b⟩ to represent a
voiced bilabial stop
.
In
loanwords
.
Other systems
In the
voiced bilabial stop phone. In phonological transcription systems for specific languages, /b/ may be used to represent a lenis phoneme
, not necessarily voiced, that contrasts with fortis /p/ (which may have greater aspiration, tenseness or duration).
Other uses
- In the base-16 numbering system, B is a number that corresponds to the number 11 in decimal(base 10) counting.
- English-speaking countries, it represents Si, the 12th note of a chromatic scale built on C. In Central Europe and Scandinavia, "B" is used to denote B-flat and the 12th note of the chromatic scale is denoted "H". Archaic forms of 'b', the b quadratum (square b, ♮) and b rotundum (round b, ♭) are used in musical notation as the symbols for natural and flat, respectively.
- In Contracted (grade 2) English braille, ⟨b⟩ stands for "but" when in isolation.
- In computer science, B is the symbol for byte, a unit of information storage.
- In engineering, B is the symbol for bel, a unit of level.
- In chemistry, B is the symbol for boron, a chemical element.
Related characters
Ancestors, descendants and siblings
- 𐤁 : Semitic letter Bet, from which the following symbols originally derive
- Β β : Beta, from which B derives
- Ⲃ ⲃ Copticletter Bēta, which derives from Greek Beta
- В в : Cyrillic letter Ve, which also derives from Beta
- Б б : Cyrillic letter Be, which also derives from Beta
- ʙ : A small capital B, used as the lowercase B in a number of alphabets during romanization
- 𐌁 : Old ItalicB, which derives from Greek Beta
- ᛒ : Runic letter Berkanan, which probably derives from Old Italic B
- 𐌱 : Gothic letter bercna, which derives from Greek Beta
- 𐞅[6]
- B with diacritics: Ƀ ƀ Ḃ ḃ Ḅ ḅ Ḇ ḇ Ɓ ɓ ᵬ[7] ᶀ[8]
- Ꞗ ꞗ : B with flourish
- ᴃ ᴯ B b : Barred B and various modifier letters are used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.[9]
- Ƃ ƃ : B with topbar
Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols
- ␢ : U+2422 ␢ BLANK SYMBOL
- ฿ : Thai baht
- ₿ : Bitcoin
- ♭: The flat in music, mentioned above, still closely resembles lowercase b.
Other representations
Computing
These are the code points for the forms of the letter in various systems
Preview | B | b | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B | LATIN SMALL LETTER B | ||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 66 | U+0042 | 98 | U+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 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other
NATO phonetic
|
Morse code |
Bravo |
ⓘ |
Signal flag | Flag semaphore | American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling) | British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling )
|
Braille dots-12 Unified English Braille |
Notes
References
- ^ "B", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989
- ^ "B", Merriam-Webster's 3rd New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged, 1993
- ^ a b c d e Baynes, T. S., ed. (1878), Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 3 (9th ed.), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 173 ,
- ISBN 1-4027-0025-3
- from the original on 30 June 2016, retrieved 11 August 2015
- ^ a b Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (8 November 2020). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic" (PDF).
- ^ Constable, Peter (30 September 2003). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
- ^ Constable, Peter (19 April 2004). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 October 2017. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
- ^ Everson, Michael; et al. (20 March 2002). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 February 2018. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
External links
- Media related to B at Wikimedia Commons
- The dictionary definition of B at Wiktionary
- The dictionary definition of b at Wiktionary
- Giles, Peter (1911), Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 3 (11th ed.), p. 87 ,