T
| T | |
|---|---|
| T t | |
 | |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Latin script |
| Type | Alphabetic and logographic |
| Language of origin | Latin language |
| Sound values | |
| In Unicode | U+0054, U+0074 |
| Alphabetical position | 20 |
| History | |
| Development | <hiero>Z9</hiero> |
| Time period | c. 700 BCE to present |
| Descendants | |
| Sisters | |
| Other | |
| Associated graphs | t(x), th, tzsch |
| Writing direction | Left-to-right |
| T |
| ISO basic Latin alphabet |
|---|
| AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz |
T, or t, is the twentieth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is tee (pronounced /ˈtiː/ <phonos file="LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-T.wav"></phonos>), plural tees.[1]
It is derived from the Semitic Taw 𐤕 of the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew script (Aramaic and Hebrew Taw ת/𐡕/File:Taw.svg, Syriac Taw ܬ, and Arabic ت Tāʼ) via the Greek letter τ (tau). In English, it is most commonly used to represent the voiceless alveolar plosive, a sound it also denotes in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second-most commonly used letter in English-language texts.[2]
History
| Phoenician Taw |
Western Greek Tau |
Etruscan T |
Latin T |
|---|---|---|---|
| File:Phoenician taw.svg | File:Greek Tau normal.svg | File:EtruscanT-01.svg | File:Capitalis monumentalis T.SVG |
Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets. The sound value of Semitic Taw, the Greek alphabet Tαυ (Tau), Old Italic and Latin T has remained fairly constant, representing [t] in each of these, and it has also kept its original basic shape in most of these alphabets.
Use in writing systems
| Orthography | Phonemes |
|---|---|
| Standard Chinese (Pinyin) | /tʰ/ |
| English | /t/, silent |
| French | /t/, silent |
| German | /t/ |
| Icelandic | /tʰ/ |
| Portuguese | /t/ |
| [t͡ʃ], allophone of /t/ before /i/, /ĩ/ and /j/ in some Brazilian dialects | |
| Spanish | /t/ |
| Turkish | /t/ |
English
In English, ⟨t⟩ usually denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive (International Phonetic Alphabet: /t/), as in tart, tee, or ties, often with aspiration at the beginnings of words or before stressed vowels. The letter ⟨t⟩ corresponds to the affricate /t͡ʃ/ in some words as a result of yod-coalescence (for example, in words ending in -"ture", such as future).
A common digraph is ⟨th⟩, which usually represents a dental fricative, but occasionally represents /t/ (as in Thomas and thyme). The digraph ⟨ti⟩ often corresponds to the sound /ʃ/ (a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant) 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 of other languages, ⟨t⟩ is often used for /t/, the voiceless dental plosive /t̪/, or similar sounds.
Other systems
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨t⟩ denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive.
Other uses
- Unit prefix T, meaning 1,000,000,000,000 times.
Related characters
Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
- T with diacritics: Ť ť Ṫ ṫ ẗ Ţ ţ Ṭ ṭ Ʈ ʈ Ț ț ƫ Ṱ ṱ Ṯ ṯ Ŧ ŧ Ⱦ ⱦ Ƭ ƭ ᵵ[3] ᶵ[4]
- Ꞇ ꞇ : Insular T,[a] also used by William Pryce to designate the voiceless dental fricative [θ][5]
- ᫎ : Combining small insular t was used in the Ormulum[6]
- ʇ : Turned small t is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
- 𐞯 : Modifier letter small t with retroflex hook is a superscript IPA letter[7]
- 𝼉 : Latin small letter t with hook and retroflex hook is a symbol for a voiceless retroflex implosive[8][9]
- 𝼍 : Latin small turned t with curl is a click letter[10][9]
- Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to T:[11]
- U+1D1B ᴛ <reserved-1D1B>
- U+1D40 ᵀ <reserved-1D40>
- U+1D57 ᵗ <reserved-1D57>
- U+1E97 ẗ <reserved-1E97>
- ₜ : Subscript small t was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902[12]
- ȶ : T with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics[13]
- Ʇ ʇ : Turned capital T and turned small t were used in transcriptions of the Dakota language in publications of the American Board of Ethnology in the late 19th century.[14]
- 𝼪 : Small t with mid-height left hook was used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language.[15]
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
- 𐤕 : Semitic letter Taw, from which the following symbols originally derive:
- ፐ : One of the 26 consonantal letters of the Ge'ez script. The Ge'ez abugida 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
- ₮ : Mongolian tögrög
- ₸ : Kazakhstani tenge
- ৳ : Bangladeshi taka
Other representations
Computing
Unicode:
- U+0054 T <reserved-0054>
- U+0074 t <reserved-0074>
- U+FF34 Ｔ <reserved-FF34>
- U+FF54 ｔ <reserved-FF54>
Codepoints 005416 (8410) and x007416 (11610) were used for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other
| NATO phonetic | Morse code |
| Tango |
<phonos file="T morse code.ogg"> ▄▄▄ </phonos> |
-
The letter T in German Sign Language
Notes
- ^ Unicode treats representation of letters of the Latin alphabet written in insular script as a typeface choice that needs no separate coding. U+A786 Ꞇ <reserved-A786> and U+A787 ꞇ <reserved-A787> are provided for use by phonetics specialists.[5]
References
- ^ "T", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "tee", op. cit.
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External links
- Error creating thumbnail: File missing Media related to Lua error in Module:Commons_link at line 62: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). at Wikimedia Commons
- File:Wiktionary-logo-en-v2.svg The dictionary definition of T at Wiktionary
- File:Wiktionary-logo-en-v2.svg The dictionary definition of t at Wiktionary
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