T, or t, is the twentieth letter in 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/), plural tees.[1] It is derived from the Semitic Taw 𐤕 of the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew script (Aramaic and Hebrew Taw ת/𐡕/, 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]
| T | |
|---|---|
| T t | |
| (See below) | |
| Usage | |
| Writing system | Latin script |
| Type | Alphabetic and Logographic |
| Language of origin | Latin language |
| Phonetic usage | [t] [tʰ] [tʼ] [d] [t̪] [t͡ʃ] [ɾ] [ʔ] /tiː/ |
| Unicode codepoint | U+0054, U+0074 |
| Alphabetical position | 20 |
| History | |
| Development | |
| Time period | ~-700 to present |
| Descendants | • Th (digraph) • ™ • ₮ • ₸ • Ŧ • Ť • Ţ • Ʇ |
| Sisters | 𐍄 Т Ҭ Ћ Ҵ ת ت ܬ ة ࠕ 𐎚 𐎙 ተ ፐ Տ տ Ց ց त ट ત ટ ⶊ |
| Variations | (See below) |
| Other | |
| Other letters commonly used with | t(x), th, tzsch |
| This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. | |
History
Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets. The sound value of Semitic Taw, 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
English
In English, ⟨t⟩ usually denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive (International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA: /t/), as in tart, tee, or ties, often with aspiration at the beginnings of words or before stressed vowels.
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.
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.)
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.
Related characters
- 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 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL T
- U+1D40 ᵀ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL T
- U+1D57 ᵗ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL T
- U+1E97 ẗ LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH DIAERESIS
- 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 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
Computing codes
| Preview | T | t | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T | LATIN SMALL LETTER T | ||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 84 | U+0054 | 116 | U+0074 |
| UTF-8 | 84 | 54 | 116 | 74 |
| Numeric character reference | T | T | t | t |
| EBCDIC family | 227 | E3 | 163 | A3 |
| ASCII 1 | 84 | 54 | 116 | 74 |
- 1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other representations
| NATO phonetic | Morse code |
| Tango | ▄▄▄ |
The letter T in German Sign Language
Explanatory 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 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER INSULAR T and U+A787 ꞇ LATIN SMALL LETTER INSULAR T 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.
- ^ Lewand, Robert. . Cryptographical Mathematics. Central College. Archived from the original on 2008-07-08. Retrieved 2008-06-25.
- ^ Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ a b Everson, Michael (2006-08-06). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael; West, Andrew (2020-10-05). "L2/20-268: Revised proposal to add ten characters for Middle English to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (2020-11-08). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic" (PDF).
- ^ Miller, Kirk (2020-07-11). "L2/20-125R: Unicode request for expected IPA retroflex letters and similar letters with hooks" (PDF).
- ^ a b Anderson, Deborah (2020-12-07). "L2/21-021: Reference doc numbers for L2/20-266R "Consolidated code chart of proposed phonetic characters" and IPA etc. code point and name changes" (PDF).
- ^ Miller, Kirk; Sands, Bonny (2020-07-10). "L2/20-115R: Unicode request for additional phonetic click letters" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF).
- ^ Cook, Richard; Everson, Michael (2001-09-20). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael; Jacquerye, Denis; Lilley, Chris (2012-07-26). "L2/12-270: Proposal for the addition of ten Latin characters to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Miller, Kirk; Rees, Neil (2021-07-16). "L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam" (PDF).
External links
- Media related to T at Wikimedia Commons
- The dictionary definition of T at Wiktionary
- The dictionary definition of t at Wiktionary