B

B
ISO basic Laitin alphabet

Cursive script 'b' and capital 'B' in the U.S. D'Nealian script style

B (named bee /ˈbiː/^[1]) is the seicont letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet. It is uised tae represent a variety o bilabial soonds (dependin on leid), but maist commonly a voiced bilabial stop.

History

The caipital letter 'B' mey hae stairtit as a pictogram o the floorplan o a hoose in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Bi 1050 BC, the Phoenician alphabet's letter haed a linear fairm that served as the beth.

Egyptian hieroglyph cottage	Phoenician beth	Greek Beta	Etruscan B	Roman B

Typografie

The modren lawercase 'b' derives frae later Roman times, when scribes began omittin the upper loop o the caipital.


Blackletter B	Uncial B

Modren Roman B	Modren Italic B	Modren Script B

Uise

In Inglis, maist ither leids that uise the Latin alphabet, an the Internaitional Phonetic Alphabet, 'b' denotes the voiced bilabial plosive /b/, as in 'bib'. In Inglis it is whiles silent; maist instances are derived frae auld monosyllablic wirds wi the 'b' final an immediately precedit bi an 'm', sic as 'lamb' an 'bomb'; a few are ensaumples o etymological spellin tae mak the wird mair lik its Latin oreeginal, sic as 'debt' or 'doubt'.

In Estonian, Icelandic, an Cheenese pinyin, 'b' daes nae denote a voiced consonant; insteid, it represents a voiceless /p/ that contrasts wi aither a geminated /pp/ (in Estonie) or an aspirated /pʰ/ (in Cheenese, Danish an Icelandic), representit bi 'p'. In Fijian 'b' represents a prenasalized /mb/, whauras in Zulu an Xhosa it represents an implosive /ɓ/, in contrast tae the digraph 'bh' which represents /b/.

Finnish anly uises 'b' in loanwirds.

'B' is an aa a muisical note. Its value varies dependin on the region; a 'b' in Anglophone kintras represents a note that is a semitone heicher than the B note in Northren Continental Europe. (Anglophone B is representit in Northren Europe wi 'H'.) Archaic fairms o 'b', the b quadratum (square b, ♮) an b rotundum (roond b, ♭) remain in uise for muisical notation as the seembols for naitural an flat, respectively.

In Contractit (grade 2) Inglis braille, 'b' staunds for "but" when in isolation.

References

↑ "B" Oxford Inglis Dictionary, 2nt edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New Internaitional Dictionary o the Inglis Language, Unabridged (1993); "bee", op. cit.

Freemit airtins

Media relatit tae B at Wikimedia Commons
The dictionar defineetion o B at Wiktionary
The dictionar defineetion o b at Wiktionary

The ISO basic Laitin alphabet v t e
Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp	Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz
Letter B with diacritics
Ḃḃ	Ḅḅ	Ḇḇ	Ƀƀ	Ɓɓ	Ƃƃ	ᵬ	ᶀ
Related
Derivations Diacritics History ISO/IEC 646 Leet o letters Numerals Palaeography Punctuation Unicode

[1] "B" Oxford Inglis Dictionary, 2nt edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New Internaitional Dictionary o the Inglis Language, Unabridged (1993); "bee", op. cit.

[1]