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/), plural tees.[1]
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 | |
Time period | ~−700 to present |
Descendants | |
Sisters | |
Other | |
Associated graphs | t(x), th, tzsch |
Writing direction | Left-to-right |
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]
History
Phoenician Taw | Western Greek Tau | Etruscan T | Latin T |
---|---|---|---|
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/ |
Portuguese | /t/ |
Spanish | /t/ |
Turkish | /t/ |
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 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 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 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
Other representations
Computing
Preview | T | t | T | t | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T | LATIN SMALL LETTER T | FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T | FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER T | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 84 | U+0054 | 116 | U+0074 | 65332 | U+FF34 | 65364 | U+FF54 |
UTF-8 | 84 | 54 | 116 | 74 | 239 188 180 | EF BC B4 | 239 189 148 | EF BD 94 |
Numeric character reference | T | T | t | t | 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
NATO phonetic | Morse code |
Tango |
Signal flag | Flag semaphore | American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling) | British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling) | Braille dots-2345 Unified English Braille |
- The letter T in German Sign Language