Lecture on the Letter D

Overview of the Letter D

• D, or d is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet.
• Used in modern English and many Western European languages.
• Pronunciation: /di/ (plural: dees).

Historical Development

• Originated from Egyptian hieroglyphs symbolizing a fish or door.
• Semitic Letter Dleth possibly inspired by these hieroglyphs.
• Represented /d/ sound in Semitic, Ancient Greek, Latin.
• Phoenician Daleth, Greek Delta, Etruscan D, and Latin D are significant ancestors.

Evolution of Form

• Lower-case 'd' evolved from the capital 'D'.
• Minuscule form developed through variations on majuscule form.
• In handwriting, often starts with an arc left of the vertical stroke.

Use in Writing Systems

• Pronunciation in Different Languages:
  • English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish: /d/
  • German: /d/, sometimes /t/
  • Vietnamese: /z/ (northern), /j/ (southern)
  • Fijian: prenasalized stop /d/
• In Vietnamese: Represents /z/ or /j/ depending on dialect.

Other Uses and Representations

• International Phonetic Alphabet: Represents voiced alveolar plosive /d/.
• Hexadecimal System: D corresponds to 13 in decimal.
• Roman Numeral: D represents 500.
• Grades: Indicates a grade below C and above E/F.
• International Vehicle Code: Represents Germany.
• Cantonese Computing: Used for 'a little'.

Related Characters and Symbols

• Latin Alphabet Descendants: African D, Latin letter Eth.
• Phonetic Symbols: Used in IPA and Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.
• Ancestors: Semitic Dalet, Greek Delta, Coptic Delta, Cyrillic De.

Computing and Encoding

• Unicode Encoding: U+0044 for capital D, U+0064 for small d.
• Used in ASCII and ISO 8859 encoding systems.
• NATO Phonetic Alphabet: Delta.
• Morse Code: -..

Sign Language Representation

• British Sign Language (BSL): Specific hand gesture to represent 'd'.

References

1. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition.
2. "The letter D". issuu. Archived Info.
3. Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of Delta.
4. Zikh Rasna: A Manual of the Etruscan Language.