2nd letter of the Latin alphabet
This article is about the letter of the Latin alphabet. For the similar Greek letter, see
Beta . For the similar Cyrillic letter, see
Ve (Cyrillic) . For the German letter confused with "B", see
ß . For other uses, see
B (disambiguation) .
B , orb , is the secondletter of theLatin alphabet , used in themodern English alphabet , the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English isbee /ˈ b iː ⓘ bees .[ 1] [ 2]
It represents thevoiced bilabial stop in many languages, including English. In some other languages, it is used to represent otherbilabial consonants .
History EgyptianPr Phoenicianbēt Western Greekbeta Etruscan Latin
The Roman⟨B⟩ derived from theGreek capitalbeta ⟨Β via itsEtruscan andCumaean variants. The Greek letter was an adaptation of thePhoenician letterbēt ⟨𐤁 .[ 3] Egyptian hieroglyph for theconsonant /b/ had been an image of afoot and calf ⟨ ,[ 4] Proto-Sinaitic glyph ⟨ adapted from the separatehieroglyph Pr ⟨ [ 5] [ a] Hebrew letterbet ⟨ב is a separate development of the Phoenician letter.[ 3]
ByByzantine times , the Greek letter⟨Β came to be pronounced/v/ ,[ 3] modern Greek asvíta (still writtenβήτα Cyrillic letterve ⟨В represents the same sound, so a modified form known asbe ⟨Б was developed to represent theSlavic languages '/b/ .[ 3] digraph /consonant cluster ⟨μπ ,mp .)
Old English was originally written inrunes , whose equivalent letter wasbeorc ⟨ᛒ , meaning "birch ". Beorc dates to at least the 2nd-centuryElder Futhark , which is now thought to have derived from theOld Italic alphabets '⟨ 𐌁 either directly or viaLatin ⟨ .
Theuncial ⟨ andhalf-uncial ⟨ introduced by theGregorian andIrish missions gradually developed into theInsular scripts '⟨ . TheseOld English Latin alphabets supplanted the earlier runes, whose use was fully banned underKing Canute in the early 11th century. TheNorman Conquest popularised theCarolingian half-uncial forms which latter developed intoblackletter ⟨ . Around 1300,letter case was increasingly distinguished, withupper- andlower-case B taking separate meanings. Following the advent ofprinting in the 15th century, theHoly Roman Empire (Germany) andScandinavia continued to use forms of blackletter (particularlyFraktur ), while England eventually adopted thehumanist andantiqua scripts developed inRenaissance Italy from a combination of Roman inscriptions and Carolingian texts. The present forms of theEnglish cursive B were developed by the 17th century.
LateRenaissance or earlyBaroque design of a B, from 1627
Use in writing systems
English InEnglish ,⟨b⟩ denotes thevoiced bilabial stop /b/ , as inbib . In English, it is sometimessilent . This occurs particularly in words ending in⟨mb⟩ , such aslamb andbomb , some of which originally had a /b/ sound, while some had the letter⟨b⟩ added by analogy (seePhonological history of English consonant clusters ). The⟨b⟩ indebt ,doubt ,subtle , and related words was added in the 16th century as anetymological spelling , intended to make the words more like theirLatin originals (debitum ,dubito ,subtilis ).
As /b/ is one of the sounds subject toGrimm's Law , words which have⟨b⟩ in English and otherGermanic languages may find their cognates in otherIndo-European languages appearing with⟨bh⟩ ,⟨p⟩ ,⟨f⟩ or⟨φ⟩ instead.[ 3] brother seventh least frequently used letter in the English language (afterV ,K ,J ,X ,Q , andZ ), with a frequency of about 1.5% in words.
Other languages Many other languages besides English use⟨b⟩ to represent avoiced bilabial stop .
InEstonian ,Danish ,Faroese ,Icelandic ,Scottish Gaelic andMandarin Chinese Pinyin ,⟨b⟩ does not denote a voiced consonant. Instead, it represents a voiceless/p/ that contrasts with either ageminated /pː/ (in Estonian) or anaspirated /ph / (in Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic and Pinyin) represented by⟨p⟩ Fijian ⟨b⟩ represents aprenasalised /mb/ , whereas inZulu andXhosa it represents animplosive /ɓ/ , in contrast to thedigraph ⟨bh⟩ which represents/b/ .Finnish uses⟨b⟩ only inloanwords .
Other systems In theInternational Phonetic Alphabet , [b] is used to represent thevoiced bilabial stop phone . In phonological transcription systems for specific languages, /b/ may be used to represent alenis phoneme , not necessarily voiced, that contrasts with fortis /p/ (which may have greater aspiration, tenseness or duration).
Other uses In thebase-16 numbering system, B is a number that corresponds to the number 11 indecimal (base 10) counting. B is amusical note . InEnglish-speaking countries , it represents Si, the 12th note of achromatic scale built onC . In Central Europe andScandinavia , "B" is used to denoteB-flat and the 12th note of the chromatic scale is denoted "H". Archaic forms of 'b', theb quadratum (square b,♮ b rotundum (round b,♭ musical notation as the symbols fornatural flat In Contracted (grade 2) English braille,⟨b⟩ stands for "but" when in isolation. In computer science, B is the symbol forbyte , a unit of information storage. In engineering, B is the symbol forbel , a unit oflevel . In chemistry, B is the symbol forboron , achemical element .
Related characters
Other representations
Computing The Latin letters⟨B⟩ and⟨b⟩ haveUnicode encodingsU+0042 B LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B andU+0062 b LATIN SMALL LETTER B . These are the samecode points as those used inASCII andISO 8859 . There are alsoprecomposed character encodings for⟨B⟩ and⟨b⟩ with diacritics, for most of those listedabove ; the remainder are produced usingcombining diacritics .
Variant forms of the letter have unique code points for specialist use: thealphanumeric symbols set in mathematics and science,Latin beta in linguistics, andhalfwidth and fullwidth forms for legacyCJK font compatibility. The Cyrillic and Greekhomoglyphs of the Latin⟨B⟩ have separate encodings:U+0412 В CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER VE U+0392 Β GREEK CAPITAL LETTER BETA
Other
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),"B" Encyclopædia Britannica ^ Schumann-Antelme, Ruth; Rossini, Stéphane (1998),Illustrated Hieroglyphics Handbook 22– 23,ISBN 1-4027-0025-3 ^ Goldwasser, Orly (March–April 2010),"How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs" ,Biblical Archaeology Review ISSN 0098-9444 ,archived from the original on 30 June 2016, retrieved11 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. Retrieved24 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. Retrieved24 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. Retrieved24 March 2018 .
External links B at Wikimedia CommonsB b Giles, Peter (1911),"B" Encyclopædia Britannica
