De (Cyrillic)
This article needs additional citations for verification. (June 2011) |
De (Д д; italic: Д д) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the voiced dental stop /d̪/, like the pronunciation of ⟨d⟩ in "door", except closer to the teeth. De is usually romanised using the Latin letter D.
History
[edit]The Cyrillic letter De was derived from the Greek letter Delta (
In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was добро (dobro), meaning "good".
In the Cyrillic numeral system, De had a value of 4.
Form
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/20/Elizaveta_Bem%27s_Azbuka_-_%D0%94.jpg/220px-Elizaveta_Bem%27s_Azbuka_-_%D0%94.jpg)
The major graphic difference between De and its modern Greek equivalent lies in the two descenders ("feet") below the lower corners of the Cyrillic letter. The descenders were borrowed from a Byzantine uncial shape of uppercase Delta.
De, like the Cyrillic letter El, has two typographical variants: an older variant where its top is pointed (like Delta), and a modern one (first used in mid-19th-century fonts) where it is square. Nowadays, almost all books and magazines are printed with fonts with the second variant of the letter; the first one is rather stylish and only a few popular text fonts use it (the best known example is "Baltika" designed in 1951-52 by V. G. Chiminova and others).
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Cursive_%22%D0%94%22.png/150px-Cursive_%22%D0%94%22.png)
In italic (Russian) type, the lowercase form looks more like the lowercase Latin ⟨d⟩, a mirrored numeral 6 or a partial derivative symbol ⟨∂⟩. Southern (Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian) typography may prefer a variant that looks like a single-storey lowercase Latin ⟨g⟩. Cursive lowercase De has the same two shapes, but with a different distribution: for example, the g-shaped variant is a standard for Russian schools.[1]
The (Russian-Ukrainian-Belarusian-Bulgarian) cursive form of capital De looks like Latin D as the printed version is not comfortable enough to be written quickly. The Serbian cursive form is closer to the shape of a numeral "2" (identical to the form sometimes used for uppercase cursive Latin Q); this form is unknown in Russia.
Usage
[edit]It most often represents the voiced dental plosive /d/. However, word-finally and before voiceless consonants, it represents a voiceless [t]. Before a palatalizing vowel, it represents /dʲ/.
Related letters and other similar characters
[edit]Δ δ : Greek letter Delta- D d : Latin letter D
- Л л : Cyrillic letter El
- Ԁ ԁ : Cyrillic letter Komi De
- G g : Latin letter G
- ∂ : Partial derivative symbol
Computing codes
[edit]Preview | Д | д | ᲁ | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DE | CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DE | CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER LONG-LEGGED DE | |||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 1044 | U+0414 | 1076 | U+0434 | 7297 | U+1C81 |
UTF-8 | 208 148 | D0 94 | 208 180 | D0 B4 | 225 178 129 | E1 B2 81 |
Numeric character reference | Д |
Д |
д |
д |
ᲁ |
ᲁ |
Named character reference | Д | д | ||||
KOI8-R and KOI8-U | 228 | E4 | 196 | C4 | ||
Code page 855 | 167 | A7 | 166 | A6 | ||
Windows-1251 | 196 | C4 | 228 | E4 | ||
ISO-8859-5 | 180 | B4 | 212 | D4 | ||
Macintosh Cyrillic | 132 | 84 | 228 | E4 |
References
[edit]- ^ "Русский алфавит" [Russian alphabet]. Archived from the original on June 6, 2013.