P

P, or p, is the 16th letter of the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its name in English is pee (pronounced /ˈp/), plural pees.[1]

P
P p
(See below)
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
TypeAlphabetic and Logographic
Language of originLatin language
Phonetic usage[p]
[]
[(p)f]
[]
[b]
/p/
Unicode codepointU+0050, U+0070
Alphabetical position16
History
Development
Time period~-700 to present
Descendants 
 
 
 
 
 
  𐍀
SistersΠ π

П
פּ
פ
ף
ف
ܦ

پ

𐎔



Պ պ
Variations(See below)
Other
Other letters commonly used withp(x), ph

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.

Phoenician
P
Archaic Greek
Pi
Greek
Pi
Cyrillic
Pe
Etruscan
P
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, Greek, and Slavic; 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.

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, ca. 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 [2] [3]
  • Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to P:[4]
    • U+1D18 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL P
    • U+1D3E MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL P
    • U+1D56 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL P
  •  : Subscript small p was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902[5]

Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols

Computing codes

Character information
PreviewPp
Unicode nameLATIN CAPITAL LETTER P    LATIN SMALL LETTER P
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode80U+0050112U+0070
UTF-8805011270
Numeric character referencePPpp
EBCDIC family215D715197
ASCII 1805011270
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. Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF).
  3. Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
  4. Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
  5. Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF).
  6. Perry, David J. (2006-08-01). "L2/06-269: Proposal to Add Additional Ancient Roman Characters to UCS" (PDF).
  7. 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).
  • Media related to P at Wikimedia Commons
  • The dictionary definition of P at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of p at Wiktionary
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