F
F | |
---|---|
F f | |
Usage | |
Writing system | Latin script |
Type | Alphabetic |
Language of origin | Latin language |
Phonetic usage | |
Unicode codepoint | U+0046 U+0066 |
Alphabetical position | 6 Numerical value: 6, 15 |
History | |
Development | |
Time period | ~-700 to present |
Descendants | |
Sisters | |
Transliteration equivalents | |
Other | |
Other letters commonly used with | f(x) |
Associated numbers | 6, 15 |
Writing direction | Left-to-Right |
ISO basic Latin alphabet |
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AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz |
F, or f, is the sixth 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 ef[note 1] (pronounced /ˈɛf/), and the plural is efs.[1]
History
Proto-Sinaitic | Phoenician waw |
Western Greek Digamma |
Etruscan V or W |
Latin F |
---|---|---|---|---|
The origin of 'F' is the Semitic letter waw that represented a sound like /v/ or /w/. Graphically it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club. It may have been based on a comparable Egyptian hieroglyph such as that which represented the word mace (transliterated as ḥ(dj)):
|
The Phoenician form of the letter was adopted into Greek as a vowel, upsilon (which resembled its descendant 'Y' but was also the ancestor of the Roman letters 'U', 'V', and 'W'); and, with another form, as a consonant, digamma, which indicated the pronunciation /w/, as in Phoenician. Latin 'F,' despite being pronounced differently, is ultimately descended from digamma and closely resembles it in form.
After sound changes eliminated /w/ from spoken Greek, digamma was used only as a numeral. However, the Greek alphabet also gave rise to other alphabets, and some of these retained letters descended from digamma. In the Etruscan alphabet, 'F' probably represented /w/, as in Greek, and the Etruscans formed the digraph 'FH' to represent /f/. (At the time these letters were borrowed, there was no Greek letter that represented /f/: the Greek letter phi '
The lowercase 'f' is not related to the visually similar long s, 'ſ' (or medial s). The use of the long s largely died out by the beginning of the 19th century, mostly to prevent confusion with 'f' when using a short mid-bar.
Use in writing systems
Languages in italics are not usually written using the Latin alphabet | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Language | Dialect(s) | Pronunciation (IPA) | Environment | Notes |
Mandarin Chinese | Standard | /f/ | Pinyin romanization | |
English | /f/, /v/ | See English orthography | ||
French | /f/ | Sometimes silent word-finally | ||
German | /f/ | |||
Portuguese | /f/ | |||
Spanish | /f/ | |||
Turkish | /f/ |
English
In the English writing system ⟨f⟩ is used to represent the sound /f/, the voiceless labiodental fricative. It is often doubled at the end of words. Exceptionally, it represents the voiced labiodental fricative /v/ in the common word "of" and its derivatives.
F is the eleventh least frequently used letter in the English language (after G, Y, P, B, V, K, J, X, Q, and Z), with a frequency of about 2.23% in words.
Other languages
In the writing systems of other languages, ⟨f⟩ commonly represents /f/, [ɸ] or /v/.
- In French orthography, ⟨f⟩ is used to represent /f/. It may also be silent at the end of words.
- In Spanish orthography, ⟨f⟩ is used to represent /f/.
- In Esperanto orthography, ⟨f⟩ is used to represent /f/.
- In the Hepburn romanization of Japanese, ⟨f⟩ is used to represent [ɸ]. This sound is usually considered to be an allophone of /h/, which is pronounced in different ways depending upon its context; Japanese /h/ is pronounced as [ɸ] before /u/.
- In Welsh orthography, ⟨f⟩ represents /v/ while ⟨ff⟩ represents /f/.
- In Slavic languages, ⟨f⟩ is used primarily in words of foreign (Hellenic, Romance, or Germanic) origin.
- In spoken Icelandic, ⟨f⟩ in the middle of a word is often voiced to [v] (e.g. Að sofa - to sleep).
Other systems
The International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨f⟩ to represent the voiceless labiodental fricative.
Other uses
- In the hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system, F is a number that corresponds to the number 15 in decimal (base 10) counting.
- An italic letter f is conventionally used to denote an arbitrary function. See also f with hook (ƒ).
- A bold italic letter f is used in musical notation as a dynamic indicator for "loud or strong". It stands for the Italian word forte.[2][3]
- In countries such as the United States, the letter "F" is defined as a failure in terms of academic evaluation. Other countries that use this system include Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and the Netherlands.
- The letter F has become an Internet meme, where it is used to pay respects. This use is derived from the 2014 video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, where in a quick-time event protagonist Jack Mitchell must pay his respects to his friend Will Irons who fell in combat in a previous mission, represented by the player pressing F when playing the PC version. People on the Internet use the letter F usually in a genuine way to express respects, sadness or condolences towards other Internet personalities, Internet memes or other players on certain events, such as death, misfortune or the end of a phenomenon, company, game, series, etc.[4]
Related characters
Ancestors, descendants and siblings
- F with diacritics:
- ꬵ : Lenis F is used in the Teuthonista phonetic transcription system[7]
- f: Superscript "f", encoded as U+1DA0 ᶠ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL F in the Phonetic Extensions Supplement block of Unicode, is used in some forms of the International Phonetic Alphabet.[6]
- ꜰ : Small capital F was used in the Icelandic First Grammatical Treatise to mark gemination[10]
- ꟳ : Modifier letter capital F[11] - Used to mark tone for the Chatino orthography in Oaxaca, Mexico; Used as a generic transcription for a falling tone; Used in para-IPA notation
- Ꝼ ꝼ : Insular F is used in Norse and Old English contexts[12]
- ꟻ : Reversed F was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for filia (daughter) or femina (woman)[13]
- Ⅎ ⅎ : Claudian letters[14]
- 𐤅: Semitic letter Waw, from which the following symbols originally derive
- Ϝ ϝ : Greek letter Digamma, from which F derives
- 𐌅 : Old Italic V/F (originally used for V, in languages such as Etruscan and Oscan), which derives from Greek Digamma, and is the ancestor of modern Latin F
- Y y : Latin letter Y, sharing its roots with F
- V v : Latin letter V, also sharing its roots with F
- Ϝ ϝ : Greek letter Digamma, from which F derives
Ligatures and abbreviations
- ₣ : French franc, Latin capital letter F with stroke
- ℉ : degree Fahrenheit
- F : Fluorine, a chemical element uses the symbol F
Other representations
Computing
These are the code points for the forms of the letter in various systems
Preview | F | f | F | f | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F | LATIN SMALL LETTER F | FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER F | FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER F | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 70 | U+0046 | 102 | U+0066 | 65318 | U+FF26 | 65350 | U+FF46 |
UTF-8 | 70 | 46 | 102 | 66 | 239 188 166 | EF BC A6 | 239 189 134 | EF BD 86 |
Numeric character reference | F |
F |
f |
f |
F |
F |
f |
f |
EBCDIC family | 198 | C6 | 134 | 86 | ||||
ASCII 1 | 70 | 46 | 102 | 66 |
- 1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other
NATO phonetic | Morse code |
Foxtrot |
ⓘ |
Signal flag | Flag semaphore | American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling) | British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling) | Braille dots-124 Unified English Braille |
Notes
- ^ Spelled eff when used as a verb
References
- ^ "F", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); "ef", "eff", "bee" (under "bee eff"), op. cit.
- ^ Randel, Don Michael (2003). The Harvard Dictionary of Music (4th ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Reference Library.
- ^ "Forte". Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary. Archived from the original on 20 October 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
- ^ "Press F to pay respects". Know Your Meme. 20 December 2014. Retrieved 15 March 2020.
- ^ Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ a b Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ a b Everson, Michael; Dicklberger, Alois; Pentzlin, Karl; Wandl-Vogt, Eveline (2011-06-02). "L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Heepe, Martin (1928). Lautzeichen und ihre Anwendung in verschiedenen Sprachgebieten (in German). Berlin: Reichsdruckerei.
- ^ "Latin Extended-D" (PDF).
- ^ 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).
- ^ Miller, Kirk; Cornelius, Craig (2020-09-25). "L2/20-251: Unicode request for modifier Latin capital letters" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael (2006-08-06). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Perry, David J. (2006-08-01). "L2/06-269: Proposal to Add Additional Ancient Roman Characters to UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael (2005-08-12). "L2/05-193R2: Proposal to add Claudian Latin letters to the UCS" (PDF).