D with stroke

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Đ (lowercase đ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, formed from D with the addition of a bar or stroke through the letter. This is the same modification that was used to create eth (ð), but eth is based on an insular variant of d while đ is based on its usual upright shape. Đ is part of the alphabets of several languages, as well as being used in linguistics as a phonetic symbol.

[edit] Appearance

A variant form with the stroke through the bowl usually used as a phonetic symbol.

In the lowercase, the stroke is usually drawn through the ascender, but when used as a phonetic symbol it may be preferred to draw it through the bowl.^[1]

In the uppercase, the stroke is normally drawn through just the left side, but in Vietnamese it may sometimes cross the entire letter.

[edit] Usage

A 9th century Latin manuscript. The abbreviation ſcđo (secundo, "second") occurs on the third line.

[edit] Latin

Đ was used in Medieval Latin to mark abbreviations of words containing the letter d. For example, hđum could stand for heredum "of the heirs". Similar strokes were added to other letters to form abbreviations.^[2]

A page from the đ section of Alexandre de Rhodes' Dictioniarum Annamiticum, a 1651 Vietnamese-Portuguese-Latin dictionary.

[edit] Vietnamese

In Vietnamese, đ represents a voiced alveolar implosive (IPA: /ɗ/). It is considered a distinct letter, and placed between D and E in alphabetical order.

The Vietnamese alphabet was developed in the 17th century, but did not replace the existing chữ nôm system (which used Chinese characters) until the 20th century when the French colonial administration made the Latin alphabet official.

[edit] South Slavic languages

Đ was added to the Croatian alphabet by Đuro Daničić in the 19th century. The lexeme soon found its way into the Latinic transliterations firstly of Serbian (through the Serbo-Croat historical chapter) and then Macedonian (its Latinic transliterations heavily influenced by Serbo-Croat from the Yugoslav period) to represent the voiced alveolo-palatal affricate (IPA: /dʑ/). The letter was used in the Serbo-Croatian language of Yugoslavia, and this practice is continued in the modern written languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. (This may include Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian, but whether to regard each as a distinct language is a controversial issue.)

Đ is considered a distinct letter, and placed between Dž and E in alphabetical order. Its Cyrillic equivalent is Ђ ђ in Serbian and Montenegrin, and Ѓ ѓ in Macedonian. When a true đ is not available or not desired, it is transcribed as dj.

[edit] Sami languages

In Northern Sami and Skolt Sami, đ represents a voiced dental fricative (English th in this; IPA: /ð/). It is considered a distinct letter, and placed between D and E in alphabetical order.

[edit] Phonetic transcription

An example of đ being used for a voiced dental fricative in the phonetic transcription of early Germanic languages, alongside ƀ for bilabial and ʒ for velar, from Joseph Wright's Old High German Primer (1906).

The lowercase đ is used in some phonetic transcription schemes to represent a voiced dental fricative (English th in this; IPA: /ð/). Eth (ð) is more commonly used for this purpose, but đ has the advantage of being able to be typed on a standard typewriter, by putting a hyphen over a d.^[3]

[edit] Computer encoding

Đ and đ are encoded in Latin-2, Latin-4 and Latin-10 as D0 and F0 respectively; in Latin-6 as A9 and B9; and in Unicode as U+0110 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D WITH STROKE and U+0111 LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH STROKE, respectively. In Unicode, both the version with the stroke through the ascender and the version with the stroke through the bowl are considered glyph variants of U+0111.^[1]

As part of WGL4, Đ and đ can be expected to display correctly on most computer systems.

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b} The Unicode Consortium (2003). The Unicode Standard, Version 4.0. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley Developers Press, 432. 
2. ^ Bischoff, Bernhard (1990). Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 150. 
3. ^ Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Ladusaw, William A. (1996). Phonetic Symbol Guide. University of Chicago Press, 36–37.