Teth

Teth, also written as Ṭēth or Tet, is a letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Ṭēt , Hebrew Ṭēt ט‎, Aramaic Ṭēth , Syriac Ṭēṯ ܛ, and Arabic Ṭāʾ ط. It is the 16th letter of the modern Arabic alphabet. The Persian ṭa is pronounced as a hard "t" sound and is the 19th letter in the modern Persian alphabet. The Phoenician letter also gave rise to the Greek theta (Θ), originally an aspirated voiceless alveolar stop but now used for the voiceless dental fricative. The Arabic letter (ط) is sometimes transliterated as tah in English,[1] for example in Arabic script in Unicode.

Tet
Phonemic representationtˤ
Position in alphabet9
Numerical value9
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician

The sound value of Teth is /tˤ/, one of the Semitic emphatic consonants.

Origins

The Phoenician letter name ṭēth may mean "spinning wheel"[2] pictured as (compare Hebrew root ט-ו-י meaning 'spinning' (a thread) which begins with Teth). According to another hypothesis (Brian Colless), the letter possibly continues a Middle Bronze Age glyph named ṭab 'good', Aramaic טַב 'tav', Hebrew טוב‎ 'tov', Syriac ܛܒܐ 'tava', modern Arabic طَيّب 'ṭayyib', all of identical meaning, whose picture is based on the Nefer 'good' hieroglyph common in ancient Egyptian names (e.g. Nefertiti):

Jewish scripture books about the "holy letters" from the 10th century onward discuss the connection or origin of the letter Teth with the word tov "good". This was especially emphasized ever since the late 1600s after the Baal Shem Tov became influential, since the letter Teth was in his Acronym standing for Tov, and goodness was part of his philosophy. The acrostic poems of the Bible use 'Tov' to represent the letter (e.g. Psalm 119:65-72).

Arabic ṭāʾ

The letter is named ṭāʾ ; Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation: /tˤ/.

Position in word: Isolated Final Medial Initial
Glyph form:
(Help)		 ط‎ ـط‎ ـطـ‎ طـ‎

Hebrew Tet
Orthographic variants
Serifsans-SerifMonospacedCursive
Hebrew		Rashi
script
ט ט ט

The Hebrew spelling of name of the letter: טֵית‎

Hebrew pronunciation

In Modern Hebrew, Tet represents a voiceless alveolar plosive /t/, although this can be pharyngealized to produce [tˤ] in traditional Temani and Sephardi pronunciation.

Significance

In gematria, Tet represents the number nine. When followed by an apostrophe, it means 9,000. The most common example of this usage is in the numbers of the Hebrew years (e.g., ט'תשנד‎ in numbers would be the date 9754).

As well, in gematria, the number 15 is written with Tet and Vav, (9+6) to avoid the normal construction Yud and Hei (10+5) which spells a name of God. Similarly, 16 is written with Tet and Zayin (9+7) instead of Yud and Vav (10+6) to avoid spelling part of the Tetragrammaton.

Tet is also one of the seven letters which receive special crowns (called tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah. See Shin, Ayin, Gimmel, Nun, Zayin, and Tzadi.

Similar symbols

A symbol similar to the Phoenician teth is used for the tensor product, as , but this is presumably an independent development, by modification of the multiplication sign ×. The Hebrew ט‎ is also visually similar to the letter Ʋ.

Character encodings
Character information
Previewטطܛࠈ
Unicode nameHEBREW LETTER TETARABIC LETTER TAHSYRIAC LETTER TETHSAMARITAN LETTER TIT
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode1496U+05D81591U+06371819U+071B2056U+0808
UTF-8215 152D7 98216 183D8 B7220 155DC 9B224 160 136E0 A0 88
Numeric character referenceטטططܛܛࠈࠈ
Character information
Preview𐎉𐡈𐤈
Unicode nameUGARITIC LETTER TETIMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER TETHPHOENICIAN LETTER TET
Encodingsdecimalhexdecimalhexdecimalhex
Unicode66441U+1038967656U+1084867848U+10908
UTF-8240 144 142 137F0 90 8E 89240 144 161 136F0 90 A1 88240 144 164 136F0 90 A4 88
UTF-1655296 57225D800 DF8955298 56392D802 DC4855298 56584D802 DD08
Numeric character reference𐎉𐎉𐡈𐡈𐤈𐤈
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References
  1. ""ﻄ" U+FEC4 Arabic Letter Tah Medial Form Unicode Character". comport. Retrieved 7 June 2019.
  2. Albright, William F. (1969). The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment. Harvard University Press.
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