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B is the second letter of the latin alphabet. In unicode, it is encoded as Latin Capital Letter B, U+0042 (B) and Latin Small Letter B, U+0062 (b).

Appearance[]

The upper case letter is identical to Greek Capital Letter Beta, U+0392 (Β) and Cyrillic Capital Letter Ve, U+0412 (В), as well as Cherokee Letter Yv, U+13F4 (Ᏼ).

Usage[]

It is used in many languages, that use the latin alphabet. Though some languages, such as Finnish and Greenlandic, don't have voiced plosives, and so only use b in loan words.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, a lower case b represents a voiced bilabial plosive.

Diacritics, ligatures and derivations[]

The number of diacritics that a b can take is relatively restricted. The full list of precomposed diacritics follows here.

Above the letter:

Diacritic Capital Unicode point Lower case Unicode point Usage
Dot (˙) U+1E02 U+1E03 Old Irish

Below the letter:

Diacritic Capital Unicode point Lower case Unicode point Usage
Dot U+1E04 U+1E05 ?
Macron U+1E06 U+1E07 e.g. Biblical Hebrew transcription

Through the letter or as part of the letter:

Diacritic Capital Unicode point Lower case Unicode point Usage
Stroke Ƀ U+0243 ƀ U+0180 e.g. Jarai
Middle tilde U+1D6C Phonetics?
Topbar Ƃ U+0182 ƃ U+0183 Zhuang until 1986
Hook Ɓ U+0181 ɓ U+0253 IPA
Flourish U+A796 U+A797 Old Vietnamese
Palatal hook U+1D80 Phonetics?

Ligatures:

Letters Capital Unicode point Lower case Unicode point Usage
DB ligature ȸ U+0238 Phonetics

Derived letters:

Variation Capital Unicode point Lower case Unicode point Usage
Small capital ʙ U+0229 e.g. IPA
Small capital with stroke U+1D03 Phonetics?
Beta U+A7B4 U+A7B5 e.g. IPA
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