T
| 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 value | 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 |
|
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]
History[edit]
| 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[edit]
English[edit]
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[edit]
In the orthographies of other languages, ⟨t⟩ is often used for /t/, the voiceless dental plosive /t̪/ or similar sounds.
Other systems[edit]
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨t⟩ denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive.
Related characters[edit]
[edit]
- 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[edit]
- 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[edit]
- ™ : Trademark symbol
- ₮ : Mongolian tögrög
- ₸ : Kazakhstani tenge
Computing codes[edit]
| Character | 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[edit]
| NATO phonetic | Morse code |
| Tango |
|
|
|
|
| Signal flag | Flag semaphore | American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling) | Braille dots-2345 Unified English Braille |
References[edit]
- ^ "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).
