From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sixteenth letter of the Latin alphabet
P (minuscule: p) is the sixteenth letter of the Latin alphabetused in the modern English alphabetthe alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is pee (pronounced ), plural pees.(1)
History
The Semitic Pê (mouth), as well as the Greek P or p (Pi), and the Etruscan and Latin letters that developed from the former alphabet all symbolized /p/a voiceless bilabial plosive.
Use in writing systems
English
In English orthography, ⟨p⟩ represents the sound /p/.
A common digraph in English is ⟨ph⟩which represents the sound , and can be used to transliterate ⟨f⟩ phi in loanwords from Greek. In German, the digraph ⟨pf⟩ is common, representing a labial affricate /pf/.
Most English words beginning with ⟨p⟩ are of foreign origin, primarily French, Latin and Greek; these languages preserve the Proto-Indo-European initial *p. Native English cognates of such words often start with ⟨f⟩since English is a Germanic language and thus has undergone Grimm’s law; a native English word with an initial /p/ would reflect Proto-Indo-European initial *b, which is so rare that its existence as a phoneme is disputed. However, native English words with non-initial ⟨p⟩ are quite common; such words can come from either Kluge’s law or the consonant cluster /sp/ (PIE: *p has been preserved after s).
P is the eighth least frequently used letter in the English language.
Other languages
In most European languages, ⟨p⟩ represents the sound /p/.
Other systems
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨p⟩ is used to represent the voiceless bilabial plosive.
Other uses
Ancestors, descendants and siblings
The Latin letter P represents the same sound as the Greek letter Pibut it looks like the Greek letter Rho.
Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols
- ₱ : Philippine peso sign
- 𝒫, 𝓅 : script letter P (uppercase and lowercase, respectively), used in mathematics. (In other contexts, a script typeface (or computer font) should be used.)
- ℘ Weierstrass p
- ℗ : sound recording copyright symbol
- ♇ : Pluto symbol, a monogram of the letters “PL”, and also the initials of Percival Lowellheralding his role in its discovery
- ꟼ : Reversed P was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for girl (girl)(8)
- Ꝑ ꝑ, Ꝓ ꝓ, Ꝕ, ꝕ : Various forms of P were used for medieval scribal abbreviations(9)
Other representations
Computing
- U+0050 P LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P
Other
See also
References
- ↑ “P”, Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); “pee,” op. cit.
- ↑ Randel, Don Michael (2003). The Harvard Dictionary of Music (4th ed.). Cambridge, MA, US: Harvard University Press Reference Library.
- ↑ “Piano”. Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary. Archived from the original on 22 October 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
- ↑ Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). “L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS” (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ↑ Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). “L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS” (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ↑ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). “L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS” (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-02-19. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ↑ Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). “L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet” (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ↑ Perry, David J. (2006-08-01). “L2/06-269: Proposal to Add Additional Ancient Roman Characters to UCS” (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-06-14. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ↑ Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (2006-01-30). “L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS” (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-09-19. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
External links
