B

B ( /ˈbiː/; named bee)^[1] is the second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is used to represent a variety of bilabial sounds (depending on language), most commonly a voiced bilabial plosive.

History

⟨B⟩ may have started as a pictogram of the floorplan of a house in Egyptian hieroglyphs. By 1050 BC, the Phoenician alphabet's letter had a linear form that served as the beth.

Typography

The modern lowercase ⟨b⟩ derives from later Roman times, when scribes began omitting the upper loop of the capital.

Usage

In English and most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, ⟨b⟩ denotes the voiced bilabial plosive /b/, as in bib. In English it is sometimes silent; most instances are derived from old monosyllablic words with the b final and immediately preceded by an m, such as lamb and bomb; a few are examples of etymological spelling to make the word more like its Latin original, such as debt or doubt. In Estonian, Icelandic, and in Chinese, ⟨b⟩ does not denote a voiced consonant; instead, it represents a voiceless /p/ that contrasts with either a geminated /pp/ (in Estonian) or an aspirated /pʰ/ (in Chinese, Danish and Icelandic), represented by ⟨p⟩. In Fijian ⟨b⟩ represents a prenasalized /mb/, whereas in Zulu and Xhosa it represents an implosive /ɓ/, in contrast to the digraph ⟨bh⟩ which represents /b/.

Finnish only uses ⟨b⟩ in loanwords.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA, ⟨b⟩ denotes the voiced bilabial plosive. Variants of ⟨b⟩ denote related bilabial consonants, like the voiced bilabial implosive and the bilabial trill. In X-SAMPA, capital ⟨B⟩ denotes the voiced bilabial fricative.

⟨B⟩ is also a musical note. Its value varies depending on the region; a ⟨b⟩ in Anglophone countries represents a note that is a semitone higher than the B note in Northern Continental Europe. (Anglophone B is represented in Northern Europe with ⟨H⟩.) Archaic forms of ⟨b⟩, the b quadratum (square b, ♮) and b rotundum (round b, ♭) remain in use for musical notation as the symbols for natural and flat, respectively.

In Contracted (grade 2) English braille, ⟨b⟩ stands for "but" when in isolation.

Related letters and other similar characters

• Β β : Greek letter Beta
• В в : Cyrillic letter Ve
• Б б : Cyrillic letter Be
• Ɓ ɓ : Latin letter B with hook
• Ъ ъ : Cyrillic letter Yer (also known as the hard sign, back yer, or tvyordiy znak) is shaped like the letter b, but has no phonetic value on its own in modern East Slavic languages. The ъ serves as an orthographic device that indicates that the consonant preceding the ъ is not palatalized.
• Ь ь : Cyrillic letter Soft sign (also known as the front yer, or myagkiy znak) is also shaped like the letter b, but has no phonetic value on its own in modern East Slavic languages. The ь serves as orthographic device that indicates that the consonant preceding the ь is softened or palatalized.
• ẞ ß : German letter Eszett, originally a ligature of long s ⟨ſ⟩ with ⟨z⟩, now considered to stand for ⟨ss⟩.
• ב : Hebrew letter Bet
• ␢ : Space

Computing codes

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

Other representations

References

External links

• Media related to B at Wikimedia Commons
• The Wiktionary entry for B
• The Wiktionary entry for b