P

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]

This article is about the letter of the Latin alphabet. For other uses, see P (disambiguation).

P
P p
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
TypeAlphabetic and Logographic
Language of originLatin language
Phonetic usage[p]
[pʰ]
[(p)f]
[pʼ]
[b]
/piː/
Unicode codepointU+0050, U+0070
Alphabetical position16
History
Development
D21
Time period~-700 to present
Descendants • Ᵽ
 • ₱
 • ℘
 • ⅌
 • ℗
 • ♇
 • ꟼ
 •
SistersΠ π
Ⲡ
П
פּ
פ
ף
ف
ܦ
ࠐ
𐎔
በ
ጰ
ፐ
Պ պ
𐍀
Other
Other letters commonly used withp(x), ph
Writing directionLeft-to-Right
P
ISO basic
Latin alphabet
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz

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		 Archaic Greek
Pi		 Greek
Pi		 Etruscan
P		 Latin
P
D21
 Latin P

Use in writing systems
Late Renaissance or early Baroque design of a P, from 1627

In English orthography and most other European languages, ⟨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 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 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).

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /p/ is used to represent the voiceless bilabial plosive.

P is the eighth least frequently used letter in the English language.

Music

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]

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 (see also Claudian letters).
      • 𐍀 : Gothic letter pertra/pairþa, which derives from Greek Pi
      • П п : Cyrillic letter Pe, which also derives from Pi
    • Ⲡ ⲡ : Coptic letter Pi
    • Պ պ: Armenian letter Pe
  • 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

Computing codes
Character information
PreviewPp
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P LATIN SMALL LETTER P
Encodingsdecimalhexdechex
Unicode80U+0050112U+0070
UTF-8805011270
Numeric character referencePPpp
EBCDIC family215D715197
ASCII[lower-alpha 1]805011270
  1. Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations

See also

References
  1. "P", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "pee," op. cit.
  2. Randel, Don Michael (2003). The Harvard Dictionary of Music (4th ed.). Cambridge, MA, US: Harvard University Press Reference Library.
  3. "Piano". Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary. Archived from the original on 22 October 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  • Media related to P at Wikimedia Commons
  • The dictionary definition of P at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of p at Wiktionary
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.