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 (˙) | Ḃ | U+1E02 | ḃ | U+1E03 | Old Irish |
Below the letter:
Diacritic | Capital | Unicode point | Lower case | Unicode point | Usage |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dot | Ḅ | U+1E04 | ḅ | U+1E05 | ? |
Macron | Ḇ | U+1E06 | ḇ | 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 | ᵬ | U+1D6C | Phonetics? | ||
Topbar | Ƃ | U+0182 | ƃ | U+0183 | Zhuang until 1986 |
Hook | Ɓ | U+0181 | ɓ | U+0253 | IPA |
Flourish | Ꞗ | U+A796 | ꞗ | U+A797 | Old Vietnamese |
Palatal hook | ᶀ | 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 | ᴃ | U+1D03 | Phonetics? | ||
Beta | Ꞵ | U+A7B4 | ꞵ | U+A7B5 | e.g. IPA |