T, or t, is the twentieth letter of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is derived from the Semitic Taw 𐤕 of the Phoenician and

Paleo-Hebrew The Paleo-Hebrew script (), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, including pre-Biblical and Biblical Hebrew, from southern Canaan, also known as the biblical kingdoms o ...

script (

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

and

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

Taw ת/𐡕/

, Syriac Taw ܬ, and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Tāʼ Taw, tav, or taf is the twenty-second and last Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Arabic script, Arabic ''tāʾ'' , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic ''taw'' 𐡕‎, Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew ''tav'' , Phoenician alphabet, Phoenic ...

) via the Greek letter τ (

tau Tau (; uppercase Τ, lowercase τ or \boldsymbol\tau; ) is the nineteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless alveolar plosive, voiceless dental or alveolar plosive . In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 300 ...

). In English, it is most commonly used to represent the

voiceless alveolar plosive The voiceless alveolar, dental and postalveolar plosives (or stops) are types of consonantal sounds used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental, alveolar, and postal ...

, a sound it also denotes in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

. It is the most commonly used

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

and the second-most commonly used letter in English-language texts.

History

'' Taw'' was the last letter of the Western Semitic and

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...

s. The sound value of Semitic ''Taw'', the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

Tαυ (''Tau''), Old Italic and Latin T has remained fairly constant, representing in each of these, and it has also kept its original basic shape in most of these alphabets.

Use in writing systems

English

In English, usually denotes the

(

and

X-SAMPA The Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (X-SAMPA) is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at University College London. It is designed to unify the individual language SAMPA alphabets, and ...

: ), as in ''tart'', ''tee'', or ''ties'', often with aspiration at the beginnings of words or before stressed vowels. The letter corresponds to the affricate in some words as a result of yod-coalescence (for example, in words ending in -"ture", such as ''future''). A common digraph is , which usually represents a dental fricative, but occasionally represents (as in ''Thomas'' and ''thyme''). The digraph often corresponds to the sound (a

voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant A voiceless postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiceless postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describes the voiceles ...

) word-medially when followed by a vowel, as in ''nation'', ''ratio'', ''negotiation'', and ''Croatia''. In a few words of modern French origin, the letter T is silent at the end of a word; these include ''croquet'' and ''debut''.

Other languages

In the

orthographies An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and emphasis. Most national and international languages have an established writing syst ...

of other languages, is often used for , the

voiceless dental plosive The voiceless alveolar, dental and postalveolar plosives (or stops) are types of consonantal sounds used in almost all Speech communication, spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents voiceless dental con ...

, or similar sounds.

Other systems

In the

, denotes the

Other uses

Unit prefix A unit prefix is a specifier or mnemonic that is added to the beginning of a unit of measurement to indicate multiples or fractions of the units. Units of various order of magnitude, sizes are commonly formed by the use of such prefixes. The Metric ...

T, meaning 1,000,000,000,000 times.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

*T with

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

s: *Ꞇ ꞇ : Insular T, also used by William Pryce to designate the

voiceless dental fricative The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to most English speakers as the 'th' in ''think''. Though rather rare as a phoneme among the world's languages, it is encount ...

�ref name=Insular> *ᫎ : Combining small insular t was used in the Ormulum * : Turned small t is used in the

(IPA) *𐞯 : Modifier letter small t with retroflex hook is a superscript IPA letter *𝼉 : Latin small letter t with hook and retroflex hook is a symbol for a voiceless retroflex implosive *𝼍 : Latin small turned t with curl is a

click letter A Nama man giving a literacy lesson in Khoekhoegowab that includes click letters Various letters have been used to write the click consonants of southern Africa. The precursors of the current IPA letters, ⟨ǀ⟩ ⟨ǁ⟩ ⟨ǃ⟩ ⟨ǂ⟩, w ...

Uralic Phonetic Alphabet Finno-Ugric transcription (FUT) or the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nesto ...

-specific symbols related to T: ** ** ** ** * : Subscript small t was used in the

prior to its formal standardization in 1902 * ȶ : T with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics *Ʇ ʇ : Turned capital T and turned small t were used in transcriptions of the

Dakota language The Dakota language ( or ), also referred to as Dakhóta, is a Siouan language spoken by the Dakota people of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, commonly known in English as the Sioux. Dakota is closely related to and mutually intelligible with the Lak ...

in publications of the American Board of Ethnology in the late 19th century. *𝼪 : Small t with mid-height left hook was used by the

British and Foreign Bible Society The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply the Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world. The ...

in the early 20th century for

romanization In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Latin script, Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and tra ...

of the

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of ...

language.

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

*𐤕 : Semitic letter Taw, from which the following symbols originally derive: **Τ τ :

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

letter

Tau Tau (; uppercase Τ, lowercase τ or \boldsymbol\tau; ) is the nineteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless alveolar plosive, voiceless dental or alveolar plosive . In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 300 ...

*** : Coptic letter Taw, which derives from Greek Tau ***Т т :

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

letter Te, also derived from Tau *** : Gothic letter tius, which derives from Greek Tau ***𐌕 : Old Italic T, which derives from Greek Tau, and is the ancestor of modern Latin T **** :

Runic Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see '' futhark'' vs ''runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were primarily used to represent a sound value (a ...

letter teiwaz, which probably derives from old Italic T *ፐ : One of the 26 consonantal letters of the Ge'ez script. The Ge'ez

abugida An abugida (; from Geʽez: , )sometimes also called alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabetis a segmental Writing systems#Segmental writing system, writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit ...

developed under the influence of Christian scripture by adding obligatory vocalic diacritics to the consonantal letters. Pesa ፐ is based on Tawe ተ.

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

* :

Trademark symbol The trademark symbol is a symbol to indicate that the preceding mark is a trademark, specifically an unregistered trademark. It complements the registered trademark symbol which is reserved for trademarks registered with an appropriate gove ...

*₮ :

Mongolian tögrög The tögrög ( ; currency sign, sign: ₮; ISO 4217, code: MNT), also spelt tugrug or tugrik, is the official currency of Mongolia. It was historically subdivided into 100 ( ). Currently, the lowest denomination in regular use is the 10-tög ...

*₸ : Kazakhstani tenge *৳ :

Bangladeshi taka The taka (, , currency sign, sign: , ISO 4217, code: BDT, Short form (linguistics), short form: Tk) is the currency of Bangladesh. In Unicode, it is encoded at . Issuance of banknotes 10 and larger is controlled by Bangladesh Bank, while the ...

History

Use in writing systems

English

Other languages

Other systems

Other uses

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

Other representations

Computing

Other

Notes

References

External links