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 /ˈpiː/), plural pees.[1]

This article is about the letter of the alphabet. For other uses, see P (disambiguation).

P
P p
(See below)
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and Logographic
Language of origin	Latin language
Phonetic usage	[p] [pʰ] [(p)f] [pʼ] [b] /piː/
Unicode value	U+0050, U+0070
Alphabetical position	16
History
Development	𐌐 P p
Time period	~-700 to present
Descendants	• Ᵽ  • ₱  • ℘  • ℗  • ♇  • ꟼ  • 𐍀
Sisters	Π π Ⲡ П פּ פ ף ف ܦ پ ࠐ 𐎔 በ ጰ ፐ Պ պ
Variations	(See below)
Other
Other letters commonly used with	p(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.

Related characters

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 ᵱ[2] ᶈ[3]
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to P:[4]
  • U+1D18 ᴘ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL P
  • U+1D3E ᴾ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL P
  • U+1D56 ᵖ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL P
• 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

• ₱ : Philippine peso sign
• ℘ : script letter P, see Weierstrass p
• ℗ : sound recording copyright symbol
• ♇ : Pluto symbol
• ꟼ : Reversed P was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for puella (girl)[6]
• Ꝑ ꝑ, Ꝓ ꝓ, Ꝕ, ꝕ : Various forms of P were used for medieval scribal abbreviations[7]

Computing codes

Character information

Preview	P		p
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P		LATIN SMALL LETTER P
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	80	U+0050	112	U+0070
UTF-8	80	50	112	70
Numeric character reference	P	P	p	p
EBCDIC family	215	D7	151	97
ASCII ^1	80	50	112	70

¹ Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Papa	▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling)	Unified English Braille

See also

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

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).

External links

• Media related to P at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of P at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of p at Wiktionary