Twentieth letter of the Latin alphabet
This article is about the letter of the Latin alphabet. For the same letterform in 8️⃣ the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets, see Te (Cyrillic) and Tau . For other uses, see T (disambiguation)
T, or t, is 8️⃣ the 20th letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages 8️⃣ and others worldwide. Its name in English is tee (pronounced ), plural tees.[1] It is derived from the Semitic Taw 8️⃣ 𐤕 of the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew script (Aramaic and Hebrew Taw ת/𐡕/ , Syriac Taw ܬ, and Arabic ت Tāʼ) 8️⃣ via the Greek letter τ (tau). In English, it is most commonly used to represent the voiceless alveolar plosive, a 8️⃣ sound it also denotes in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second-most commonly 8️⃣ used letter in English-language texts.[2]
History [ edit ]
Phoenician
Taw Etruscan
T Greek
Tau
Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew 8️⃣ alphabets. The sound value of Semitic Taw, Greek alphabet Tαυ (Tau), Old Italic and Latin T has remained fairly constant, 8️⃣ representing [t] in each of these; and it has also kept its original basic shape in most of these alphabets.
Use 8️⃣ in writing systems [ edit ]
English [ edit ]
In English, ⟨t⟩ usually denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive (International Phonetic Alphabet 8️⃣ and X-SAMPA: /t/), as in tart, tee, or ties, often with aspiration at the beginnings of words or before stressed 8️⃣ vowels.
The digraph ⟨ti⟩ often corresponds to the sound /ʃ/ (a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant) word-medially when followed by a vowel, as 8️⃣ in nation, ratio, negotiation, and Croatia.
The letter ⟨t⟩ corresponds to the affricate /t͡ʃ/ in some words as a result of 8️⃣ yod-coalescence (for example, in words ending in "-ture", such as future).
A common digraph is ⟨th⟩, which usually represents a dental 8️⃣ fricative, but occasionally represents /t/ (as in Thomas and thyme.)
In a few words of modern French origin, the letter T 8️⃣ is silent at the end of a word; these include croquet and debut.
Other languages [ edit ]
In the orthographies of 8️⃣ other languages, ⟨t⟩ is often used for /t/, the voiceless dental plosive /t̪/, or similar sounds.
Other systems [ edit ]
In 8️⃣ the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨t⟩ denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive.
Related characters [ edit ]
Descendants and related characters in the Latin 8️⃣ alphabet [ edit ]
A curly T pictured in the coat of arms of the former Teisko municipality, which was consolidated 8️⃣ to Tampere.
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets [ edit ]
𐤕 : Semitic letter Taw, from which the following symbols originally 8️⃣ derive Τ τ : Greek letter Tau Ⲧ ⲧ : Coptic letter Taw, which derives from Greek Tau Т т 8️⃣ : Cyrillic letter Te, also derived from Tau 𐍄 : Gothic letter tius, which derives from Greek Tau 𐌕 : 8️⃣ Old Italic T, which derives from Greek Tau, and is the ancestor of modern Latin T ᛏ : Runic letter 8️⃣ teiwaz, which probably derives from old Italic T
ፐ : One of the 26 consonantal letters of Ge'ez script. The Ge'ez 8️⃣ abugida developed under the influence of Christian scripture by adding obligatory vocalic diacritics to the consonantal letters. Pesa ፐ is 8️⃣ based on Tawe ተ.
Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations [ edit ]
Computing codes [ edit ]
Character information Preview T t Unicode 8️⃣ name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T LATIN SMALL LETTER T Encodings decimal hex dec hex Unicode 84 U+0054 116 U+0074 UTF-8 8️⃣ 84 54 116 74 Numeric character reference T T t t EBCDIC family 227 E3 163 A3 ASCII 1 84 8️⃣ 54 116 74
1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other representations 8️⃣ [ edit ]
Explanatory notes [ edit ]
^ U+A786 Ꞇ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER INSULAR T and U+A787 ꞇ LATIN SMALL LETTER 8️⃣ INSULAR T are provided for use by phonetics specialists.[5] Unicode treats representation of letters of the Latin alphabet written in 8️⃣ insular script as a typeface choice that needs no separate coding.andare provided for use by phonetics specialists.
References [ edit ]
