T

Name	T
Letter	T t
Script	Latin script
Type	Alphabet
Typedesc	ic and logographic
Language	Latin language
Unicode	U+0054, U+0074
Alphanumber	20
Fam1	Z9
Fam2	Proto-Sinaitic Taw
Fam3	20px
Fam4	Phoenician Taw
Fam5	𐤕
Fam6	Ττ
Fam7	𐌕
Usageperiod	700 BCE to present
Associates	t(x), th, tzsch
Direction	Left-to-right
Image
Imageclass	skin-invert-image

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 'tiː), plural tees.

It is derived from the Semitic Taw 𐤕 of the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew script (Aramaic and Hebrew Taw ת/𐡕/

10 px

, 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.

History

Phoenician Taw	Western Greek Tau	Etruscan T	Latin T
30px	45px	30px	x30px

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 in each of these, and it has also kept its original basic shape in most of these alphabets.

Use in writing systems

(Pinyin)
English	, silent
French	, silent
German
Icelandic
Indonesian
Portuguese
Portuguese	, allophone of before , and in some Brazilian dialects
Spanish
Turkish

English

In English, usually denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive (International Phonetic Alphabet: ), as in tart, tee, or ties, often with aspiration at the beginnings of words or before stressed vowels. The letter 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 , which usually represents a dental fricative, but occasionally represents /t/ (as in Thomas and thyme). The digraph 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.

Unit prefix T, meaning 1,000,000,000,000 times.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

A curly T pictured in the coat of arms of the former Teisko municipality, which was consolidated to Tampere.

T with diacritics:
Ꞇ ꞇ : Insular T, also used by William Pryce to designate the voiceless dental fricative θ
ᫎ : Combining small insular t was used in the Ormulum
: Turned small t is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
𐞯 : Modifier letter small t with retroflex hook is a superscript IPA letter
𝼉 : Latin small letter t with hook and retroflex hook is a symbol for a voiceless retroflex implosive
𝼍 : Latin small turned t with curl is a click letter
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to T:

: Subscript small t was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902
ȶ : T with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics
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.
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.

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

𐤕 : Semitic letter Taw, from which the following symbols originally derive:

Τ τ : Greek letter Tau

: Coptic letter Taw, which derives from Greek Tau
Т т : Cyrillic letter Te, also derived from Tau
: 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

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.

Table of Contents

T

History

Use in writing systems

English

Other languages

Other systems

Other uses

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

Other representations

Other

Notes

References

External links