Theminuscule (lower-case) form of 'd' consists of a lower-story leftbowl and astem ascender. It most likely developed by gradual variations on themajuscule (capital) form 'D', and is now composed as a stem with a fulllobe to the right. In handwriting, it was common to start the arc to the left of the vertical stroke, resulting in aserif at the top of the arc. This serif was extended while the rest of the letter was reduced, resulting in an angled stroke and loop. The angled stroke slowly developed into a vertical stroke.[6]
In some languages wherevoicelessunaspirated stops contrast with voiceless aspirated stops,⟨d⟩ represents an unaspirated/t/, while⟨t⟩ represents an aspirated/tʰ/. Examples of such languages includeIcelandic,Scottish Gaelic,Navajo and thepinyin transliteration ofMandarin.
InCantonese: Because the lack of Unicode CJK support in early computer systems, many Hong Kongers and Singaporeans used the capitalized D to represent啲 (di1; 'a little').[10]
The Latin letters⟨D⟩ and⟨d⟩ haveUnicode encodingsU+0044DLATIN CAPITAL LETTER D andU+0064dLATIN SMALL LETTER D. These are the samecode points as those used inASCII andISO 8859. There are alsoprecomposed character encodings for⟨D⟩ and⟨d⟩ with diacritics, for most of those listedabove; the remainder are produced usingcombining diacritics.
InBritish Sign Language (BSL), the letter 'd' is indicated by signing with the right hand held with the index and thumb extended and slightly curved, and the tip of the thumb and finger held against the extended index of the left hand.
References
^"D"Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989);Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "dee",op. cit.
