D-comma

D with comma below.

D̦ d̦ (D-comma) is a letter which was part of the Romanian alphabet, and used to represent the sound /z/ or /dz/ where it was derived from a Latin d (e.g. d̦i, pronounced /zi/ came from Latin die, day). It was the equivalent of the Cyrillic letters З and Ѕ.

This letter was first introduced by Petru Maior in his 1819 book Ortographia romana sive Latino-Valachica, una cum clavis, qua penetralia originationis vocum reserantur...: "d̦ sicut Latinorum z ac cyrillicum з".

In 1844 Ioan Eliade introduced d̦ again in his magazine Curierul de ambe sexe as a substitute for з.

On 23 October 1858 the Eforia Instrucţiunii Publice of Wallachia issued a decree in which, among other rules, d̦ was for the third time adopted instead of Cyrillic з. However, this rule will not be fully adopted until later.

Taking the matter in his hands, internal affairs minister Ion Ghica stated on 8 February 1860 that whoever in his order ignored the new transitional alphabet rules, was going to be fired.

In Moldavia, the transitional alphabet and the letter d̦ was adopted much later. In his grammar published in Paris in 1865, Vasile Alecsandri adopted this sign instead of з, viewing the coma below d as a small s (d̦ was often pronounced /dz/, /ds/. This was also the case with ș—ss and ț—ts).

This letter was abandoned in 1904 and is no longer in use. In Unicode it is represented by the letter D followed by a combining comma below (U+0326). It closely resembles the Livonian letter Ḑ (d with cedilla, U+1E10 and U+1E11).

References

• Negruzzi, Constantin, Studii asupra limbei române, in vol. "Alexandru Lăpuşneanul", Ed. Pentru Literatură, Bucharest, 1969.
• Vîrtosu, Emil, Paleografia româno-chirilică, Ed. Ştiinţifică, Bucharest, 1968.