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Biography
pp-semi-indefAbout|the letterHatnote|For technical reasons, B# redirects here. For the musical note, see B (musical note) pp-move-indefLatin alphabet navbox|uc=B|lc=b B (IPAc-en|icon|'|b|i?; English_alphabet#Letter_names|named bee "B" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); ''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "bee", op. cit. ) is the second Letter (alphabet)|letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet . It is used to represent a variety of bilabial consonant|bilabial sounds (depending on language), most commonly a voiced bilabial plosive .
History
?B? may have started as a pictogram of the floorplan of a house in Egyptian hieroglyph s. By 1050 BC , the Phoenician alphabet 's letter had a linear form that served as the beth.
Egyptian hieroglyph cottage
beth
Beta
Etruscan B
Roman B
Typography
The modern lowercase ?b? derives from later Roman cursive#New Roman cursive|Roman times, when scribes began omitting the upper loop of the capital.
Blackletter B
Uncial script
Modern Roman B
Modern Italic B
Modern Script B
Usage
In English language|English and most other languages that use the Latin script|Latin alphabet , ?b? denotes the voiced bilabial plosive IPAslink|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 lam b and bom b ; a few are examples of etymology|etymological spelling to make the word more like its Latin language|Latin original, such as debt or doubt . In Estonian language|Estonian , Icelandic language|Icelandic , and in Chinese language|Chinese , ?b? does not denote a voiced consonant; instead, it represents a voicelessIPA|/p/ that contrasts with either a geminate d IPA|/pp/ (in Estonian) or an aspiration (linguistics)|aspirated IPA|/p?/ (in Chinese, Danish and Icelandic), represented by ?p?. In Fijian language|Fijian ?b? represents a prenasalized consonant|prenasalized IPA|/mb/, whereas in Zulu language|Zulu and Xhosa language|Xhosa it represents an implosive consonant|implosive IPA|/?/, in contrast to the digraph (orthography)|digraph ?bh? which represents IPA|/b/.
Finnish language|Finnish only uses ?b? in loanwords .
In the help:IPA|International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA , ?IPA|b? denotes the voiced bilabial plosive . Variants of ?b? denote related bilabial consonant s, 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, music|natural) and b rotundum (round b, music|b) remain in use for musical notation as the symbols for natural (music)|natural and flat (music)|flat , respectively.
In Contracted (grade 2) English braille, ?b? stands for "but" when in isolation.
Related letters and other similar characters
? ß : Beta (letter)|Greek letter Beta
? ? : Ve (Cyrillic)|Cyrillic letter Ve
? ? : Be (Cyrillic)|Cyrillic letter Be
unicode|? ? : ?|Latin letter B with hook
? ? : Yer|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|East Slavic languages. The ? serves as an orthographic device that indicates that the consonant preceding the ? is not palatalized.
? ? : Soft sign|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|East Slavic languages. The ? serves as orthographic device that indicates that the consonant preceding the ? is softened or palatalized.
unicode|? ß : ß|German letter Eszett , originally a ligature of long s ??? with ?z?, now considered to stand for ?ss?.
unicode|? : Bet (letter)#Hebrew Bet / Vet|Hebrew letter Bet
? : Space (punctuation)|Space
Computing codes
character
Unicode name
character encoding
Unicode
UTF-8
Numeric character reference
EBCDIC family
ASCII 1
1 and all encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other representations
Letter other reps|NATO=Bravo |Morse=–··· |Character=B2 |Braille=?
References
Reflist
External links
Commons-inline|B
Wiktionary-inline|B
Wiktionary-inline|b
Latin alphabet|B| Category:ISO basic Latin letters
