Talk:B/Archive 1

Fix Vandalism
I use a computer I share with my brother, and just recieved a message that I vandalized this page. Can someone revert it? I just created an account to clear this up and don't know how to use a reverting bot, nor do I remember the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Trogdorisawesome (talk • contribs).
 * At the time that you posted that question, there were no warnings on your talk page. (I have since issued two, so the vandalism is continuing.) Perhaps the warnings were sent to an IP discussion page before you registered your account? In any case, if it's you, please stop, and if it's not you, please take steps to see that it doesn't happen any more. It's possible to log on to the computer using a password that you don't share with your brother. Failing that, you should make a point of logging out from Wikipedia when you're finished at the computer, so that your brother can't make edits in your name. ElinorD 02:11, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Citation query
Why the hell would there need to be a citation for "B being the second letter of the alphabet" and "in English is pronounced 'bee'"? Is there an exception for common sense? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)
 * Classic Wikipedia bureaucracy...


 * Welcome to Wikipedia!--66.233.63.71 (talk) 22:20, 24 March 2008 (UTC)Ryan Cunningham

"B" by StrawberryClock
It's a red letter B against a white background. Nothing else. Even the B is just typed. I'd vote for just removing it from the list. What do you all think? --Billpg 21:42, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm neither against nor in favor of removing it, all I care about is (if it is decided to be kept) that has some sort of link to anything (or at least an explanation). Few people know about Newgrounds / the clock crew, so some sort of explanation is necessary (either that or simply remove it).--Vertigo200 17:50, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
 * B is your god! it was created by Strawberryclock, who created the clock crew, who contains such flash artists as Strangeclock and Renegadeclock, two of the best flash artists ever to hit Newgrounds, so if you don't like b, you better leave newgrounds, Strawberryclock is the king of the portal -- anonymous 23:35, 31 October 2005
 * Wait...who are Strangeclock and Renegadeclock...? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Trogdorisawesome (talk • contribs) 01:01, 5 February 2007 (UTC).
 * Sorry, but even though B may be important to Strawberryclock and Newgrounds, it is most definitely not a an encyclopedia worthy entry.--Vertigo200 01:35, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Are we talking about the same "B"? Red letter B on a white background? Its remarkably unremarkable. Besides, this is Wikipedia, not Newgrounds. I can't leave Newgrounds as I'm not in it. --Billpg 01:47, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * B is an important and influential peice of situationist art. It's certainly worthy of mention. We may not be on Newgrounds, but the group it sparked is sizeable either way. If this is supposed to be a bank of knowledge, it should have its place. - AlbinoClock 11:38 1 February 2006
 * I agree with AlbinoClock --Nerd42 (talk) 17:52, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Consensus seems to be against my position, so I've left it in. --Billpg 19:51, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
 * It is outside of the scope of this article. If we were to list all artwork pertaining to the letter B, the article would never end. Even then, this picture has hardly any artistic or cultural value, regardless of what 'crew' it started on Newgrounds. With all due respect to AlbinoClock (whose name suggest affiliation with the related 'clock' crew and therefore whose impartiality I doubt) this group he calls "sizeable" is but minute part of the Internet, which itself is only one small part of human culture/knowledge. I strongly vote to remove it. --Salimatou 22:32, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Please, show a few pieces of artwork that are at all iconic and relate to the letter B. I think that this is a particularly interesting fact about the letter B - that someone submitted a poor quality flash containing simply a B and it's one of the most important flash movies on one of the most important flash movie sites on the internet. Earfetish1 04:11, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Again

 * B was the title of a Macromedia Flash submission that has become widely-known around the world via the internet, created by a Newgrounds user with the screen name "StrawberryClock", who has the unofficial title of the ultimate "King of the Portal".

I added this, since someone took it off again. --Nerd42 (talk) 19:00, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm putting it back, because the shortened version doesn't say the same thing. A Macromedia Flash file that only has one frame is different from a picture, largely because you can decompile a Flash file to take graphics out of it. Many people have actually done this with "B" to put the joke in their own Flash submissions, sometimes as easter eggs. Without the explanation of where/why/who that I included in the above version, it just doesn't make sense.--Nerd42 (talk) 15:27, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I've rephrased it again, this time keeping in the note that it was made using Flash. That it is a flash file does not stop it from being first and foremost, a picture. "Widely-known" is debatable. His title (self-declared?) of king of a portal is not (IMO) relevant to this page. --Billpg 19:28, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I see we agree that this mention should be here, yet I couldn't find it in the article anywhere. I looked in history but I failed to find it and would probobly spend ages looking for it if I tried anymore. Can someone put it back or re-write it?--TailsClock (talk) 18:33, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
 * '''What the heck are all of you talking about?! Αδελφος (talk) 16:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Clock Crew people
If you replace that link again, I'll take the issue up in arbitration. That content really is not useful or encyclopedic at all. Wickethewok 02:15, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * B is the essential foundation of the Clock Crew, which is a major part of Newgrounds history. If Neurotically Yours and other equally bad cartoons get a place in Wikipedia, so does the Clock Crew, and also B. AirPumpClock 16:55, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Edit request
Change lead from “B ... is the second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet” to “B ... is the second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and the first consonant”? 71.146.20.62 (talk) 19:56, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Why? Is it common to index anything by consonant letters (only)? —Tamfang (talk) 21:04, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

gangsta usage
I've removed this: "Used in modern gangster situations the letter has become a way to refer to a person, (Such as "aiight B"). It is possible it derived from the shorthand version of 'gangsta' "G". " because it doesn't make a lot of sense. What are modern gangster situations? Being held up? What does "aiight" mean? Is any and every person called B or or are they assigned different letters? If the former, an edited version should perhaps go among meanings of B. --Hugh7 04:19, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
 * aiight = alright
 * b = brother
 * (anon delivers)
 * Thanks for removing this garbage, Hugh7. I guess a paragraph on the usage of the letter Q to refer to the queen's friend bob by pirates would be classified as irrelevant too. I don't know how this evon got here, nice deletion! ''' MICHAEL IPF5  SUMAN Talk 09:17, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * ...Um, no. 'B' and 'G' can be used to refer to anyone, or some people might just use the letter of the human's name, but it depends on the letter.  This needs to be put back in, if there is a section on usage of the letter.                     ~Rayvn  08:38, 3 February 2015 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by RayvnEQ (talk • contribs)

B - spelled in english bee ????????
Is "bee" some official academic spelling of which i'm not aware, or does the poster mean it's pronounced "bee". We already have the IPA pronunciation. Elchoco (talk) 18:31, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think there are actual official spellings of letters (People probably can't agree on how to spell them). I think "bee" is just an aid on how to pronounce it. Αδελφος (talk) 16:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)--88.233.6.10 (talk) 18:13, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * There's a thing called Help:Respell which people sometimes add for Americans who don't use IPA. Nothing wrong with that. But no, "bee" is not a name and we should not phrase that section to make it seem that way. Fixed. — Llywelyn II   17:41, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Runes
B arrived from the runes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.116.88.233 (talk) 09:25, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Not really, but mention and link to the runic letter are added now. — Llywelyn II   17:41, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Hieroglyphs
For what it's worth, the EB9 mentions that the Phoenician bet may have derived from the Egyptian crane (=soul) rather than any of the (mostly unsourced) suppositions here. It's 100+ years out of date so I'm willing to take it with a grain of salt, but it's a little odd that so something seems messed up on the modern hieroglyphic end of this one as well... — Llywelyn II   17:41, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * no crane at all is now listed, which seems odd for such an important Eurasian bird, particularly given that the Egyptians were nuts about things closer to the sun than they were,
 * "soul" is G53, a human-headed bird "pronounced" b3 (?!),
 * the other b3 is G29, a "jabiru", which is a South American bird

Other characters that look like B/b
I'd like to see added letters/characters/symbols from other writing systems, such as Cherokee Ꮟ si, Ᏼ yv. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.135.193.98 (talk) 08:02, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 January 2018
50.207.244.57 (talk) 19:25, 22 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. —Granger (talk · contribs) 19:31, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 May 2018
123.192.16.178 (talk) 10:02, 17 May 2018 (UTC) The letter B originally sounded like Yanny in latin
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. L293D (☎ • ✎) 11:55, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Missing frequency info
Can we add "Like J, K, Q, V, X, and Z, B is not used very frequently in English. It is the seventh least frequently used letter in the English language." if that makes sense? Ssjhowarthisawesome (talk) 22:32, 28 March 2018 (UTC)
 * According to Letter frequency, B is 17 out of 26 in EARIOTNSLCUDPMHGBFYWKVXZJQ, so nothing special. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 05:58, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 July 2018
5.210.215.20 (talk) 09:37, 25 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Danski454 (talk) 16:29, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Linguist?
Can a linguist tidy this article up? - RadRafe

Remember to sign your posts with four tildes. WikiTalkHelpGuy (talk) 22:42, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Origin of B all the way back to Sumer
The word /bita/ is Akkadian for house [From "A manual of Sumerian grammer and texts", Hayes, 2000 page 8] and so clearly the origin of the letter B go back to Akkadian if not all the way to Sumerian and just after the first writing. TedHuntington 22:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Nope. — Llywelyn II   17:41, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

It's Bea (IPA /bi:/) PhoenixSummon (talk) 22:20, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Other uses, Computer Science, 'b' for 'bit'
In addition to 'B' being used to denote bytes (as noted in the article), 'b' being used to denote 'bits' is equally notable, in my opinion. I would have simply added this if the article were not semi-protected. --50.229.42.146 (talk) 22:59, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

▪ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.41.10.228 (talk) 11:14, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

History chronological
History section should be in chronological order. Roman etc. should come before Old English etc. 68.41.114.29 (talk) 03:15, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Picture of the B with a "bee insect" is not a bee
It's a mantispidae, or mantisfly/mantidfly: Mantispidae 50.104.93.87 (talk) 18:26, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 April 2023
117.227.86.50 (talk) 05:04, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate.  JTP (talk • contribs) 05:10, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Spanish B
The b in Spanish depends on what dialect your speaking. 66.205.108.8 05:05, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
 * For instance, in Cuba, B is almost like a V. Cameron Nedland 23:13, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
 * No, the B doesn't "depend" on the dialect, it is consistently pronounced as the phoneme [b], with the allophonic approximant [β] in intervocalic and coda positions (/ˈbaso ðeˈβino/ vs /ˈbino/). That's the "v" you've heard in Cuba. But there's also the fact that during the 20th Century, Latin American schools taught an affected and hypercorrectionist pronunciation of written V as [v], which merged with B in Hispanic Romance even during the Roman Era (as referred to by Roman authors).66.81.176.20 (talk) 11:04, 22 April 2023 (UTC)