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
- ™ : Trademark symbol
- ₮ : Mongolian tögrög
- ₸ : Kazakhstani tenge
- ৳ : Bangladeshi taka
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[b] | 84 | 54 | 116 | 74 | ||||
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
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]
- ^ Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
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 July 8, 2008. Retrieved June 25, 2008.
- ^ Constable, Peter (September 30, 2003). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 11, 2017. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
- ^ Constable, Peter (April 19, 2004). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 11, 2017. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
- ^ a b Everson, Michael (August 6, 2006). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on August 19, 2013. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
- ^ Everson, Michael; West, Andrew (October 5, 2020). "L2/20-268: Revised proposal to add ten characters for Middle English to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 24, 2020. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
- ^ Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (November 8, 2020). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on July 30, 2021. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
- ^ Miller, Kirk (July 11, 2020). "L2/20-125R: Unicode request for expected IPA retroflex letters and similar letters with hooks" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 8, 2022. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
- ^ a b Anderson, Deborah (December 7, 2020). "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 January 8, 2021. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
- ^ Miller, Kirk; Sands, Bonny (July 10, 2020). "L2/20-115R: Unicode request for additional phonetic click letters" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 8, 2022. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
- ^ Everson, Michael; et al. (March 20, 2002). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on February 19, 2018. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
- ^ Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (January 27, 2009). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 11, 2017. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
- ^ Cook, Richard; Everson, Michael (September 20, 2001). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 11, 2017. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
- ^ Everson, Michael; Jacquerye, Denis; Lilley, Chris (July 26, 2012). "L2/12-270: Proposal for the addition of ten Latin characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on March 30, 2019. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
- ^ Miller, Kirk; Rees, Neil (July 16, 2021). "L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on September 7, 2021. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
