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 /ˈtiː/), 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 system | Latin script |
| Type | Alphabetic and Logographic |
| Language of origin | Latin language |
| Phonetic usage | [t] [tʰ] [tʼ] [d] [t̪] [t͡ʃ] [ɾ] [ʔ] /tiː/ |
| Unicode codepoint | U+0054, U+0074 |
| Alphabetical position | 20 |
| History | |
| Development | |
| Time period | ~-700 to present |
| Descendants | • Th (digraph) • ™ • ₮ • ₸ • Ŧ • Ť • Ţ • Ʇ |
| Sisters | 𐍄 Т Ҭ Ћ Ҵ ת ت ܬ ة ࠕ 𐎚 𐎙 ተ ፐ Տ տ Ց ց त ट ત ટ ⶊ |
| Variations | (See below) |
| Other | |
| Other letters commonly used with | t(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.
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 was used by William Pryce to designate the voiceless dental fricative [θ][5]
- ʇ : Turned small t is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet
- Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to T:[6]
- 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[7]
- ȶ : T with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics[8]
- 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[9]
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 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
Computing codes
| Preview | T | t | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T | LATIN SMALL LETTER T | ||
| Encodings | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
| Unicode | 84 | U+0054 | 116 | U+0074 |
| UTF-8 | 84 | 54 | 116 | 74 |
| Numeric character reference | 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 representations
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).
- Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
- Everson, Michael (2006-08-06). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS" (PDF).
- Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
- Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF).
- Cook, Richard; Everson, Michael (2001-09-20). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
- Everson, Michael; Jacquerye, Denis; Lilley, Chris (2012-07-26). "L2/12-270: Proposal for the addition of ten Latin characters to the UCS" (PDF).
