D, the German Kurrent letter d

History

The letter D occupies the 4th position in the German alphabet. Phonetically, it represents a voiced alveolar plosive /d/, which is realized as voiceless /t/ in syllable-coda positions due to terminal devoicing.

Lowercase d is one of the most visually striking and recognizable letters in Kurrent. It begins with an oval lower bowl, but rather than rising vertically, its ascending stem sweeps upward and curves backward to the left in a dramatic overhead loop that folds over the letter's body before exiting to the right. Capital D starts with a vertical downstroke, loops at the base, and encloses the glyph in a wide, convex right arch.

Because d appears in ubiquitous grammatical articles and conjunctions ('der', 'die', 'das', 'den', 'dem', 'und'), its backward-looping ascender acts as a reliable paleographical landmark across all varieties of German cursive from the sixteenth century to 1941.

In German text d is the eighth most frequent letter, at about 5.1% of all letters,^[1] which is why its backward loop is a landmark a reader meets on nearly every line.