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T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its name in English is tee (pronounced /ˈtiː/), plural tees.[1] It is derived from the Semitic letters taw (ת, ܬ, ت) 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 common letter in English-language texts.[2]

History[edit]

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[edit]

English[edit]

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.)

Other languages[edit]

In the orthographies of other languages, ⟨t⟩ is often used for /t/, the voiceless dental plosive /t̪/, or similar sounds.

Other systems[edit]

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨t⟩ denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive.

Related characters[edit]

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet[edit]

  • 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][4]
  • Ꞇ ꞇ : Insular T was used by William Pryce to designate the voiceless dental fricative [θ][5]
  • ʇ : Turned small t is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet
  • Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to T:[6]
    • U+1D1B LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL T
    • U+1D40 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL T
    • U+1D57 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL T
    • U+1E97 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH DIAERESIS
  • ₜ : Subscript small t was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902[7]
  • ȶ : T with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics[8]
  • 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[9]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets[edit]

  • 𐤕 : Semitic letter Taw, from which the following symbols originally derive
    • Τ τ : Greek letter Tau
      • Ⲧ ⲧ : Coptic letter Taw, which derives from Greek Tau
      • Т т : Cyrillic letter Te, also derived from Tau
      • 𐍄 : 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 letter teiwaz, which probably derives from old Italic T
  • 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[edit]

  • ™ : Trademark symbol
  • ₮ : Mongolian tögrög
  • ₸ : Kazakhstani tenge

Computing codes[edit]

1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "T", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "tee", op. cit.
  2. ^ Lewand, Robert. "Relative Frequencies of Letters in General English Plain text". Cryptographical Mathematics. Central College. Archived from the original on 2008-07-08. Retrieved 2008-06-25.
  3. ^ Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF).
  4. ^ Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
  5. ^ Everson, Michael (2006-08-06). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS" (PDF).
  6. ^ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
  7. ^ Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF).
  8. ^ Cook, Richard; Everson, Michael (2001-09-20). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
  9. ^ Everson, Michael; Jacquerye, Denis; Lilley, Chris (2012-07-26). "L2/12-270: Proposal for the addition of ten Latin characters to the UCS" (PDF).

External links[edit]

  • Media related to T at Wikimedia Commons
  • The dictionary definition of T at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of t at Wiktionary