20th letter of the Latin alphabet
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
), plural
tees
.
[1]
It is derived from the Semitic
Taw
?? of the
Phoenician
and
Paleo-Hebrew
script (
Aramaic
and
Hebrew
Taw ?/??/
,
Syriac
Taw ?, and
Arabic
?
T??
) 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
,
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
/?/
(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
/t??/
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
/t?/
, or similar sounds.
Other systems
In the
International Phonetic Alphabet
, ⟨
t
⟩ denotes the
voiceless alveolar plosive
.
Other uses
Related characters
Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
- ?? :
Semitic
letter
Taw
, from which the following symbols originally derive
- Τ τ :
Greek
letter
Tau
- ? ?
:
Coptic
letter Taw, which derives from Greek Tau
- Т т :
Cyrillic
letter
Te
, also derived from Tau
- ??
:
Gothic
letter tius, which derives from Greek Tau
- ?? :
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
- ? : 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 ? is based on Tawe
?
.
Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations
Other representations
Computing
Character information
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
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.
"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
.
- ^
Constable, Peter (2003-09-30).
"L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2017-10-11
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
Constable, Peter (2004-04-19).
"L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2017-10-11
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
a
b
Everson, Michael (2006-08-06).
"L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2013-08-19
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
Everson, Michael; West, Andrew (2020-10-05).
"L2/20-268: Revised proposal to add ten characters for Middle English to the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2020-10-24
. Retrieved
2022-10-13
.
- ^
Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (2020-11-08).
"L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2021-07-30
. Retrieved
2022-10-13
.
- ^
Miller, Kirk (2020-07-11).
"L2/20-125R: Unicode request for expected IPA retroflex letters and similar letters with hooks"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2022-10-08
. Retrieved
2022-10-13
.
- ^
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)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2021-01-08
. Retrieved
2022-10-13
.
- ^
Miller, Kirk; Sands, Bonny (2020-07-10).
"L2/20-115R: Unicode request for additional phonetic click letters"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2022-10-08
. Retrieved
2022-10-13
.
- ^
Everson, Michael
; et al. (2002-03-20).
"L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2018-02-19
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27).
"L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2017-10-11
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
Cook, Richard; Everson, Michael (2001-09-20).
"L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2017-10-11
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
Everson, Michael; Jacquerye, Denis;
Lilley, Chris
(2012-07-26).
"L2/12-270: Proposal for the addition of ten Latin characters to the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2019-03-30
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
Miller, Kirk; Rees, Neil (2021-07-16).
"L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2021-09-07
. Retrieved
2022-10-13
.
External links
- Media related to
T
at Wikimedia Commons
- The dictionary definition of
T
at Wiktionary
- The dictionary definition of
t
at Wiktionary