Second letter of many Semitic alphabets
This article is about the Semitic letter. For the use of this letter in mathematics, see
Beth number
.
Bet
,
Beth
,
Beh
, or
Vet
is the second
letter
of the
Semitic abjads
, including
Phoenician
b?t
?? ,
Hebrew
b?t
?,
Aramaic
b??
??,
Syriac
b??
?, and
Arabic
b??
?. Its sound value is the
voiced bilabial stop
?b? or the
voiced labiodental fricative
?v?.
The letter's name means "house" in various Semitic languages (Arabic
bayt
, Akkadian
b?tu, b?tu
, Hebrew:
bay??
, Phoenician
b?t
etc.; ultimately all from
Proto-Semitic
*bayt-
), and appears to derive from an
Egyptian hieroglyph
of a house by
acrophony
.
The Phoenician letter gave rise to, among others, the
Greek
beta (
Β, β
),
Latin
B
(B, b) and
Cyrillic
Be (
Б, б
) and Ve (
В, в
).
Origin
[
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]
The name
bet
is derived from the West Semitic word for "
house
" (as in Hebrew
bayt
??????), and the shape of the letter derives from a
Proto-Sinaitic
glyph that may have been based on the
Egyptian hieroglyph
Pr
which depicts a house.
Arabic b??
[
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]
The Arabic letter
?
is named
?????
b??
(
b??
). It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:
Position in word
|
Isolated
|
Final
|
Medial
|
Initial
|
Glyph form:
(
Help
)
|
?
|
??
|
???
|
??
|
The letter normally renders
/b/
sound, except in some names and
loanwords
where it can also render
/p/
, often Arabized as
/b/
, as in
?????????
(
Persil
). For
/p/
, it may be used interchangeably with the Persian letter
?
-
pe
(with 3 dots) in this case.
Interpretation of
?
[
edit
]
B?? is the first letter of the
Quran
[
1:1
]
, the first letter of
Basmala
.
[1]
The letter b?? as a
prefix
may function as a
preposition
meaning "by" or "with". Some
tafsirs
interpreted the positioning of b?? as the opener of the Qur'an with
"by My (
God
's) cause
(all is present and happen)"
.
[2]
Hebrew bet
[
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]
Hebrew spelling:
?????
The Hebrew letter represents two different phonemes: a "b" sound (
/b/
) (bet) and a "v" sound (
/v/
) (vet). When Hebrew is written
Ktiv menuqad
(with
niqqud diacritics
) the two are distinguished by a dot (called a
dagesh
) in the centre of the letter for
/b/
and no dot for
/v/
. In modern Hebrew, the more commonly used
Ktiv hasar niqqud
spelling, which does not use diacritics, does not visually distinguish between the two phonemes.
This letter is named
bet
and
vet
, following the modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation,
bet
and
vet
(
/bet/
), in
Israel
and by most
Jews
familiar with Hebrew, although some non-Israeli
Ashkenazi
speakers pronounce it
beis
(or
bais
)
[3]
and
veis
(
/bejs/
) (or
vais
or
vaiz
).
[4]
It is also named
beth
, following the
Tiberian Hebrew
pronunciation, in academic circles.
In modern Hebrew the frequency of the usage of bet, out of all the letters, is 4.98%.
Variations on written form/pronunciation
[
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]
Bet with the dagesh
[
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]
When the Bet appears as
??
with a "dot" in its center, known as a
dagesh
, then it represents
/b/
. There are various rules in
Hebrew grammar
that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.
Bet without the dagesh (Vet)
[
edit
]
In
Ktiv menuqad
spelling, which uses diacritics, when the letter appears as
?
without
the
dagesh
("dot") in its center it represents a
voiced labiodental fricative
:
/v/
. In
Ktiv hasar niqqud
spelling, without diacritics, the letter without the dot may represent either phoneme.
Mystical significance of
?
[
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]
Bet in
gematria
represents the number 2.
As a
prefix
, the letter bet may function as a
preposition
meaning "in", "at", or "with".
Bet is the first letter of the
Torah
. As Bet is the number 2 in gematria, this is said to symbolize that there are two parts to Torah: the Written
Torah
and the
Oral Torah
. According to
Jewish legend
, the letter Bet was specially chosen among the 22 letters in Hebrew by
God
as the first letter of Torah as it begins with "
Bereshit
(In the beginning) God created heaven and earth."
[5]
Genesis Rabbah
points out that the letter is closed on three sides and open on one; this is indicate that one can investigate what happened after creation, but not what happened before it, or what is above the heavens or below the earth.
[6]
Syriac beth
[
edit
]
Beth
|
Madn?aya
Beth
|
Ser?o
Beth
|
Es?rangela
Beth
|
In the
Syriac alphabet
, the second letter is
?
? Beth (
????
). It is one of six letters that represents two associated sounds (the others are
Gimel
,
Dalet
,
Kaph
,
Pe
and
Taw
). When Beth has a hard pronunciation (
qu???ya
) it is a [
b
]. When Beth has a soft pronunciation (
rukk??a
) it is traditionally pronounced as a [
v
], similar to its Hebrew form. However, in eastern dialects, the soft Beth is more often pronounced as a [
w
], and can form
diphthongs
with its preceding vowel. Whether Beth should be pronounced as a hard or soft sound is generally determined by its context within a word. However, wherever it is traditionally
geminate
within a word, even in dialects that no longer distinguish double consonants, it is hard. In the West
Syriac dialect
, some speakers always pronounce Beth with its hard sound.
Beth, when attached to the beginning of a word, represents the
preposition
'in, with, at'. As a numeral, the letter represents the number 2, and, using various systems of dashes above or below, can stand for 2,000 and 20,000.
Other uses
[
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]
Mathematics
[
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]
In
set theory
, the
beth numbers
stand for powers of infinite sets.
Character encodings
[
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]
Character information
Preview
|
ב
|
ب
|
ܒ
|
ࠁ
|
ℶ
|
Unicode name
|
HEBREW LETTER BET
|
ARABIC LETTER BEH
|
SYRIAC LETTER BETH
|
SAMARITAN LETTER BIT
|
BET SYMBOL
|
Encodings
|
decimal
|
hex
|
dec
|
hex
|
dec
|
hex
|
dec
|
hex
|
dec
|
hex
|
Unicode
|
1489
|
U+05D1
|
1576
|
U+0628
|
1810
|
U+0712
|
2049
|
U+0801
|
8502
|
U+2136
|
UTF-8
|
215 145
|
D7 91
|
216 168
|
D8 A8
|
220 146
|
DC 92
|
224 160 129
|
E0 A0 81
|
226 132 182
|
E2 84 B6
|
Numeric character reference
|
ב
|
ב
|
ب
|
ب
|
ܒ
|
ܒ
|
ࠁ
|
ࠁ
|
ℶ
|
ℶ
|
Named character reference
|
|
|
|
|
ℶ
|
Character information
Preview
|
𐎁
|
𐡁
|
𐤁
|
Unicode name
|
UGARITIC LETTER BETA
|
IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER BETH
|
PHOENICIAN LETTER BET
|
Encodings
|
decimal
|
hex
|
dec
|
hex
|
dec
|
hex
|
Unicode
|
66433
|
U+10381
|
67649
|
U+10841
|
67841
|
U+10901
|
UTF-8
|
240 144 142 129
|
F0 90 8E 81
|
240 144 161 129
|
F0 90 A1 81
|
240 144 164 129
|
F0 90 A4 81
|
UTF-16
|
55296 57217
|
D800 DF81
|
55298 56385
|
D802 DC41
|
55298 56577
|
D802 DD01
|
Numeric character reference
|
𐎁
|
𐎁
|
𐡁
|
𐡁
|
𐤁
|
𐤁
|
See also
[
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]
References
[
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]
External links
[
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]
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