P
P | |||
---|---|---|---|
P p | |||
Usage | |||
Writing system | Latin script | ||
Type | Alphabetic and logographic | ||
Language of origin | Latin language | ||
Sound values | [p] [pʰ] [(p)f] [pʼ] [b] /piː/ | ||
In Unicode | U+0050, U+0070 | ||
Alphabetical position | 16 | ||
History | |||
Development |
| ||
Time period | ~−700 to present | ||
Descendants | • Ᵽ • ₱ • ℘ • ⅌ • ℗ • ♇ • ꟼ • ¶ | ||
Sisters | Π π Ⲡ П ף פ פּ ف ܦ ࠐ 𐎔 በ ጰ ፐ Պ պ प 𐍀 པ | ||
Other | |||
Associated graphs | p(x), ph | ||
Writing direction | Left-to-right | ||
Numbers. I Tens And Ones Make 20 1.2 3.4 5.6 7.8 9.10 11.12 13.14 15.16 17.18 19.20 P, or p, is the sixteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is pee (pronounced /ˈpiː/), plural pees.[1]
History
The Semitic Pê (mouth), as well as the Greek Π or π (Pi), and the Etruscan and Latin letters that developed from the former alphabet all symbolized /p/, a voiceless bilabial plosive.
Egyptian | Proto-Sinaitic | Proto-Canaanite pʿit |
Phoenician Pe |
Western Greek Pi |
Etruscan P |
Latin P | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Use in writing systems
Orthography | Phonemes |
---|---|
Standard Chinese (Pinyin) | /pʰ/ |
English | /p/, silent |
French | /p/, silent |
German | /p/ |
Portuguese | /p/ |
Spanish | /p/ |
Turkish | /p/ |
English
In English orthography, ⟨p⟩ represents the sound /p/.
A common digraph in English is ⟨ph⟩, which represents the sound /f/, and can be used to transliterate ⟨φ⟩ phi in loanwords from Greek. In German, the digraph ⟨pf⟩ is common, representing a labial affricate /pf/.
Most English words beginning with ⟨p⟩ are of foreign origin, primarily French, Latin and Greek; these languages preserve the Proto-Indo-European initial *p. Native English cognates of such words often start with ⟨f⟩, since English is a Germanic language and thus has undergone Grimm's law; a native English word with an initial /p/ would reflect Proto-Indo-European initial *b, which is so rare that its existence as a phoneme is disputed. However, native English words with non-initial ⟨p⟩ are quite common; such words can come from either Kluge's law or the consonant cluster /sp/ (PIE: *p has been preserved after s).
P is the eighth least frequently used letter in the English language.
Other languages
In most European languages, ⟨p⟩ represents the sound /p/.
Other systems
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨p⟩ is used to represent the voiceless bilabial plosive.
Other uses
- A bold italic letter p is used in musical notation as a dynamic indicator for "quiet". It stands for the Italian word piano.[2][3]
Related characters
Ancestors, descendants and siblings
The Latin letter P represents the same sound as the Greek letter Pi, but it looks like the Greek letter Rho.
- 𐤐 : Semitic letter Pe, from which the following symbols originally derive:
- Π π : Greek letter Pi
- 𐌐 : Old Italic and Old Latin P, which derives from Greek Pi, and is the ancestor of modern Latin P. The Roman P had this form (𐌐) on coins and inscriptions until the reign of Claudius, c. 50 AD.
- 𐍀 : Gothic letter pertra/pairþa, which derives from Greek Pi
- П п : Cyrillic letter Pe, which derives from Greek Pi
- Ⲡ ⲡ : Coptic letter Pi
- Պ պ: Armenian letter Pe
- Π π : Greek letter Pi
- P with diacritics: Ṕ ṕ Ṗ ṗ Ᵽ ᵽ Ƥ ƥ ᵱ[4] ᶈ[5]
- Turned P
- Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to P:[6]
- U+1D18 ᴘ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL P
- U+1D3E ᴾ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL P
- U+1D56 ᵖ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL P
- p : Subscript small p was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902[7]
Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols
- ₱ : Philippine peso sign
- 𝒫, 𝓅 : script letter P (uppercase and lowercase, respectively), used in mathematics. (In other contexts, a script typeface (or computer font) should be used.)
- ℘ Weierstrass p
- ℗ : sound recording copyright symbol
- ♇ : Pluto symbol
- ꟼ : Reversed P was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for puella (girl)[8]
- Ꝑ ꝑ, Ꝓ ꝓ, Ꝕ, ꝕ : Various forms of P were used for medieval scribal abbreviations[9]
Other representations
Computing
Preview | P | p | P | p | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P | LATIN SMALL LETTER P | FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P | FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER P | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 80 | U+0050 | 112 | U+0070 | 65328 | U+FF30 | 65360 | U+FF50 |
UTF-8 | 80 | 50 | 112 | 70 | 239 188 176 | EF BC B0 | 239 189 144 | EF BD 90 |
Numeric character reference | P |
P |
p |
p |
P |
P |
p |
p |
EBCDIC family | 215 | D7 | 151 | 97 | ||||
ASCII[a] | 80 | 50 | 112 | 70 |
- ^ Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other
NATO phonetic | Morse code |
Papa |
Signal flag | Flag semaphore | American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling) | British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling) | Unified English Braille |
See also
- Mind your Ps and Qs
- Pence or "penny", the English slang for which is p (e.g. "20p" = 20 pence)
References
- ^ "P", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "pee," op. cit.
- ^ Randel, Don Michael (2003). The Harvard Dictionary of Music (4th ed.). Cambridge, MA, US: Harvard University Press Reference Library.
- ^ "Piano". Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary. Archived from the original on 22 October 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
- ^ Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ^ Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ^ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-02-19. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ^ Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ^ Perry, David J. (2006-08-01). "L2/06-269: Proposal to Add Additional Ancient Roman Characters to UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-06-14. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ^ Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-09-19. Retrieved 2018-03-24.