In a writing system , a letter is a grapheme that generally corresponds to a phoneme —the smallest functional unit of speech—though there is rarely total one-to-one correspondence between the two. An alphabet is a writing system that uses letters.
20-631: 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 / ˈ p iː / ), plural pees . 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/ ,
40-411: A multigraph . Multigraphs include digraphs of two letters (e.g. English ch , sh , th ), and trigraphs of three letters (e.g. English tch ). The same letterform may be used in different alphabets while representing different phonemic categories. The Latin H , Greek eta ⟨Η⟩ , and Cyrillic en ⟨Н⟩ are homoglyphs , but represent different phonemes. Conversely,
60-513: A lowercase form (also called minuscule ). Upper- and lowercase letters represent the same sound, but serve different functions in writing. Capital letters are most often used at the beginning of a sentence, as the first letter of a proper name or title, or in headers or inscriptions. They may also serve other functions, such as in the German language where all nouns begin with capital letters. The terms uppercase and lowercase originated in
80-549: A variety of modern uses in mathematics, science, and engineering . People and objects are sometimes named after letters, for one of these reasons: The word letter entered Middle English c. 1200 , borrowed from the Old French letre . It eventually displaced the previous Old English term bōcstæf ' bookstaff '. Letter ultimately descends from the Latin littera , which may have been derived from
100-530: A voiceless bilabial plosive . 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
120-456: Is considered to be a separate letter from ⟨n⟩ , though this distinction is not usually recognised in English dictionaries. In computer systems, each has its own code point , U+006E n LATIN SMALL LETTER N and U+00F1 ñ LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH TILDE , respectively. Letters may also function as numerals with assigned numerical values, for example with Roman numerals . Greek and Latin letters have
140-670: Is disputed. See Ancient Greek phonology and Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching . Most handbooks agree on attributing to it the pronunciation /zd/ (like Mazda ), but some scholars believe that it was an affricate / dz / (like adze). The modern pronunciation was, in all likelihood, established in the Hellenistic age and may have already been a common practice in Classical Attic ; for example, it could count as one or two consonants metrically in Attic drama. Zeta has
160-653: Is indicated by the existence of precomposed characters for use with computer systems (for example, ⟨á⟩ , ⟨à⟩ , ⟨ä⟩ , ⟨â⟩ , ⟨ã⟩ .) In the following table, letters from multiple different writing systems are shown, to demonstrate the variety of letters used throughout the world. Zeta Zeta ( UK : / ˈ z iː t ə / , US : / ˈ z eɪ t ə / ; uppercase Ζ , lowercase ζ ; Ancient Greek : ζῆτα , Demotic Greek : ζήτα , classical [d͡zɛ̌ːta] or [zdɛ̌ːta] zē̂ta ; Greek pronunciation: [ˈzita] zíta )
180-701: Is the ancestor of zed , the name of the Latin letter Z in Commonwealth English. Swedish and many Romance languages (such as Italian and Spanish ) do not distinguish between the Greek and Roman forms of the letter; " zeta " is used to refer to the Roman letter Z as well as the Greek letter. The letter ζ represents the voiced alveolar fricative IPA: [z] in Modern Greek . The sound represented by zeta in Greek before 400 BC
200-509: Is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet . In the system of Greek numerals , it has a value of 7. It was derived from the Phoenician letter zayin [REDACTED] . Letters that arose from zeta include the Roman Z and Cyrillic З . Unlike the other Greek letters , this letter did not take its name from the Phoenician letter from which it was derived; it was given a new name on the pattern of beta , eta and theta . The word zeta
220-553: 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
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#1732772754719240-593: The Greek diphthera 'writing tablet' via Etruscan . Until the 19th century, letter was also used interchangeably to refer to a speech segment . Before alphabets, phonograms , graphic symbols of sounds, were used. There were three kinds of phonograms: verbal, pictures for entire words, syllabic, which stood for articulations of words, and alphabetic, which represented signs or letters. The earliest examples of which are from Ancient Egypt and Ancient China, dating to c. 3000 BCE . The first consonantal alphabet emerged around c. 1800 BCE , representing
260-476: The Greek letter Rho . [REDACTED] Letter (alphabet) A letter is a type of grapheme , the smallest functional unit within a writing system. Letters are graphemes that broadly correspond to phonemes , the smallest functional units of sound in speech. Similarly to how phonemes are combined to form spoken words, letters may be combined to form written words. A single phoneme may also be represented by multiple letters in sequence, collectively called
280-672: The Phoenicians, Semitic workers in Egypt. Their script was originally written and read from right to left. From the Phoenician alphabet came the Etruscan and Greek alphabets. From there, the most widely used alphabet today emerged, Latin, which is written and read from left to right. The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters, nineteen of which the Latin alphabet used, and the Greek alphabet, adapted c. 900 BCE , added four letters to those used in Phoenician. This Greek alphabet
300-516: The consonant cluster /sp/ (PIE: *p has been preserved after s). P is the eighth least frequently used letter in the English language. In most European languages, ⟨p⟩ represents the sound / p / . In the International Phonetic Alphabet , ⟨p⟩ is used to represent the voiceless bilabial plosive . The Latin letter P represents the same sound as the Greek letter Pi , but it looks like
320-438: The days of handset type for printing presses. Individual letter blocks were kept in specific compartments of drawers in a type case. Capital letters were stored in a higher drawer or upper case. In most alphabetic scripts, diacritics (or accents) are a routinely used. English is unusual in not using them except for loanwords from other languages or personal names (for example, naïve , Brontë ). The ubiquity of this usage
340-629: The distinct forms of ⟨S⟩ , the Greek sigma ⟨Σ⟩ , and Cyrillic es ⟨С⟩ each represent analogous /s/ phonemes. Letters are associated with specific names, which may differ between languages and dialects. Z , for example, is usually called zed outside of the United States, where it is named zee . Both ultimately derive from the name of the parent Greek letter zeta ⟨Ζ⟩ . In alphabets, letters are arranged in alphabetical order , which also may vary by language. In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩
360-571: The late 7th and early 8th centuries. Finally, many slight letter additions and drops were made to the common alphabet used in the western world. Minor changes were made such as the removal of certain letters, such as thorn ⟨Þ þ⟩ , wynn ⟨Ƿ ƿ⟩ , and eth ⟨Ð ð⟩ . A letter can have multiple variants, or allographs , related to variation in style of handwriting or printing . Some writing systems have two major types of allographs for each letter: an uppercase form (also called capital or majuscule ) and
380-477: The numerical value 7 rather than 6 because the letter digamma (ϝ, also called ' stigma ' as a Greek numeral ) was originally in the sixth position in the alphabet. The uppercase zeta is not used, because it is normally identical to Latin Z . The lower case letter can be used to represent: ZETA (fusion reactor) (all uppercase) was an early fusion experiment. These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using
400-456: Was the first to assign letters not only to consonant sounds, but also to vowels . The Roman Empire further developed and refined the Latin alphabet, beginning around 500 BCE. During the fifth and sixth centuries, the development of lowercase letters began to emerge in Roman writing. At this point, paragraphs, uppercase and lowercase letters, and the concept of sentences and clauses still had not emerged; these final bits of development emerged in
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