P, or 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 /ˈpiː/), plural pees.[1]
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 and Greek; these languages preserve the 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 an 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).
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, c. 50 AD.
𐍀 : Gothic letter pertra/pairþa, which derives from Greek Pi
П п : Cyrillic letter Pe, which derives from Greek Pi
Pence or "penny", the English slang for which is p (e.g. "20p" = 20 pence)
References
^"P", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "pee," op. cit.
^Randel, Don Michael (2003). The Harvard Dictionary of Music (4th ed.). Cambridge, MA, US: Harvard University Press Reference Library.
^"Piano". Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary. Archived from the original on 22 October 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
^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). Archived(PDF) from the original on 2018-09-19. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
