T

T, or t, is the twentieth 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 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]

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.)

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.

A curly T pictured in the coat of arms of the former Teisko municipality, which was consolidated to Tampere.
  • 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][4]
  • Ꞇ ꞇ : Insular T,[lower-alpha 1] 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 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL T
    • U+1D40 MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL T
    • U+1D57 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL T
    • U+1E97 LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH DIAERESIS
  •  : 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
    • 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 .

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

Computing codes

Character information
PreviewTt
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T LATIN SMALL LETTER T
Encodingsdecimalhexdechex
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

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

Notes

  1. Unicode treats representation of letters of the Latin alphabet written in insular script as a typeface choice that needs no separate coding. U+A786 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER INSULAR T and U+A787 LATIN SMALL LETTER INSULAR T are provided for use by phonetics specialists.[5]

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; West, Andrew (2020-10-05). "L2/20-268: Revised proposal to add ten characters for Middle English to the UCS" (PDF).
  7. Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (2020-11-08). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic" (PDF).
  8. Miller, Kirk (2020-07-11). "L2/20-125R: Unicode request for expected IPA retroflex letters and similar letters with hooks" (PDF).
  9. 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).
  10. Miller, Kirk; Sands, Bonny (2020-07-10). "L2/20-115R: Unicode request for additional phonetic click letters" (PDF).
  11. Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF).
  12. Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF).
  13. Cook, Richard; Everson, Michael (2001-09-20). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).
  14. Everson, Michael; Jacquerye, Denis; Lilley, Chris (2012-07-26). "L2/12-270: Proposal for the addition of ten Latin characters to the UCS" (PDF).
  15. Miller, Kirk; Rees, Neil (2021-07-16). "L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam" (PDF).
  • Media related to T at Wikimedia Commons
  • The dictionary definition of T at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of t at Wiktionary
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