P (minuscule: 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 ), plural pees.

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 , a voiceless bilabial plosive.

{| class="wikitable"

|- style="background:#eee;"9997145563

!Egyptian

!Proto-Sinaitic

!Proto-Canaanite<br>pʿit

! Phoenician <br />Pe

! Western Greek<br />Pi

! Etruscan <br /> P

! Latin<br />P

|- style="text-align:center;"

|

| class=skin-invert-image|25px

| class=skin-invert-image|25px

| class=skin-invert-image|25px

| class=skin-invert-image|25px

| class=skin-invert-image|25px

| class=skin-invert-image|x30px|Latin P

|}

thumb|180px|center|Late [[Renaissance or early Baroque design of a P, from 1627]]

Use in writing systems

{| class="wikitable mw-collapsible"

|+ Pronunciation of by language

! Orthography

! Phonemes

|-

! Catalan

|

|-

!

|

|-

! English

| , silent

|-

! French

| , silent

|-

! German

|

|-

! Portuguese

|

|-

! Spanish

|

|-

! Turkish

|

|}

English

In English orthography, represents the sound .

A common digraph in English is , which represents the sound , and can be used to transliterate phi in loanwords from Greek. In German, the digraph is common, representing a labial affricate .

Most English words beginning with are of foreign origin, primarily French, Latin and Greek; these languages preserve the Proto-Indo-European initial *p. Native English cognates of such words often start with , since English is a Germanic language and thus has undergone Grimm's law; a native English word with an initial 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 are quite common; such words can come from either Kluge's law or the consonant cluster (PIE: *p has been preserved after s).

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

Other languages

In most European languages, represents the sound .

Other systems

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

Other uses

  • A bold italic letter is used in musical notation as a dynamic indicator for "quiet". It stands for the Italian word piano.

<!-- Please only list characters (symbols in a writing system, but not just convenience code points in Unicode) that are actually related in terms of origin to the letter that is the topic of this article. Characters that merely look subjectively similar need not apply. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources before adding more. -->

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, .
  • : Gothic letter pertra/pairþa, which derives from Greek Pi
  • П п : Cyrillic letter Pe, which derives from Greek Pi
  • : Coptic letter Pi
  • Պ պ: Armenian letter Pe
  • P with diacritics: Ṕ ṕ Ṗ ṗ Ᵽ ᵽ Ƥ ƥ ᵱ ᶈ
  • Turned P: <span style="transform: rotate(180deg); display: inline-block;">P</span> d, an additional letter of the Latin script not encoded in Unicode
  • Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to P:
  • <sub>p</sub> : Subscript small p was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902

Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols

  • ₱ : Philippine peso sign
  • 𝒫, 𝓅 : script letter P (uppercase and lowercase, respectively), used in mathematics. (In other contexts, a script typeface (or computer font) should be used.)
  • ℘ Weierstrass p
  • ℗ : sound recording copyright symbol
  • ♇ : Pluto symbol, a monogram of the letters "PL", and also the initials of Percival Lowell, heralding his role in its discovery
  • ꟼ : Reversed P was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for puella (girl)
  • Ꝑ ꝑ, Ꝓ ꝓ, Ꝕ, ꝕ : Various forms of P were used for medieval scribal abbreviations

Other representations

Computing <span class="anchor" id="Computing codes"></span>

Other

See also

  • Mind your Ps and Qs
  • Pence or "penny", the English slang for which is p (e.g. "20p" = 20 pence)

References