T

T, or t, is the 20th letter in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its name in English is tee (pronounced /ˈt/), 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]

T
T t
(See below)
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
TypeAlphabetic and Logographic
Language of originLatin language
Phonetic usage[t]
[]
[]
[d]
[]
[t͡ʃ]
[ɾ]
[ʔ]
/t/
Unicode codepointU+0054, U+0074
Alphabetical position20
History
Development
Time period~-700 to present
Descendants  Th (digraph)
 
 
 
  Ŧ
  Ť
  Ţ
 
Sisters𐍄
Т
Ҭ
Ћ
Ҵ
ת
ت
ܬ

ة

𐎚
𐎙


Տ տ
Ց ց




Variations(See below)
Other
Other letters commonly used witht(x), th, tzsch

History

Phoenician
Taw
Etruscan
T
Greek
Tau

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 /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

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.

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

  • 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
  •  : 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

Computing codes

Character information
PreviewTt
Unicode nameLATIN CAPITAL LETTER T    LATIN SMALL LETTER T
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode84U+0054116U+0074
UTF-8845411674
Numeric character referenceTTtt
EBCDIC family227E3163A3
ASCII 1845411674
1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations

References

  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).
  • Media related to T at Wikimedia Commons
  • The dictionary definition of T at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of t at Wiktionary
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.