This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2007)

ISO basic Latin alphabet
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

D (named dee /ˈdiː/^[1]) is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is used to denote 500 in Roman numerals

History [link]

Egyptian hieroglyph door	Phoenician daleth	Greek Delta	Etruscan D	Roman D

The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter represented /d/; in the Etruscan alphabet the letter was superfluous but still retained (see letter B). The equivalent Greek letter is Delta, ⟨Δ⟩.^{[citation needed]}

The minuscule (lower-case) form of ⟨d⟩ consists of a loop and a tall vertical stroke. It developed by gradual variations on the majuscule (capital) form. In handwriting, it was common to start the arc to the left of the vertical stroke, resulting in a serif 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.

Usage [link]

The letter D, standing for "Deutschland", i.e. Germany in German, on a boundary stone at the border between Austria and Germany.

In nearly all languages that use the Latin alphabet and the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨d⟩ represents the voiced alveolar plosive /d/, but in the Vietnamese alphabet it represents the sound /z/ (or /j/ in southern dialects). In Fijian it represents a prenasalized stop /nd/.^[2] In some languages where voiceless unaspirated stops contrast with voiceless aspirated stops, ⟨d⟩ represents an unaspirated /t/, while ⟨t⟩ represents an aspirated /tʰ/. Examples of such languages include Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic, Navajo, and the Pinyin transliteration of Mandarin.

Related letters and other similar characters [link]

• Đ đ : Latin letter D with stroke
• Ɗ ɗ : Latin letter D with hook
• Ð ð : Latin letter Eth
• Δ δ : Greek letter Delta
• Д д : Cyrillic letter De
• ∂ : the partial derivative symbol, Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \part

Computing codes [link]

¹ and all encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations [link]

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Delta	–··

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	Braille

In British Sign Language (BSL), the letter ⟨d⟩ is indicated by signing with the right hand held with index and thumb extended and slightly curved and tip of thumb and finger held against extended index of left hand.

See also [link]

• democratic party

References [link]

External links [link]

• Media related to D at Wikimedia Commons
• The Wiktionary entry for D
• The Wiktionary entry for d