Teth

Teth, also called Ṭēth or Tet, is the ninth letter of the Semitic abjads. This includes the Phoenician ṭēt 𐤈, Hebrew ṭēt ט‎, Aramaic ṭēṯ 𐡈, Syriac ṭēṯ ܛ, and Arabic ṭāʾ ط‎. It is also linked to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪗‎‎‎, South Arabian 𐩷, and Geʽez ጠ.

The Phoenician letter helped create the Greek theta (Θ). It was once an aspirated voiceless dental stop but is now used for the voiceless dental fricative. The Arabic letter (ط) is sometimes written as Tah in English, like in Arabic script in Unicode.

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

Origins

The Phoenician letter name ṭēth may mean "spinning wheel". Some think the letter comes from an old symbol named ṭab meaning "good". Many Jewish religious books say the letter Teth is linked to the word tov, also meaning "good". This idea became more popular after the Baal Shem Tov became famous, because the letter Teth was part of his name, standing for "Tov" or goodness. Bible poems also use the word 'Tov' to represent the letter.

Arabic ṭāʾ

The letter is named ṭāʾ طَاءْ. In Modern Standard Arabic, it is pronounced /tˤ/.

It has four forms, and the letter’s shape does not change based on its position in a word.

Hebrew tet

In Modern Hebrew, the letter Tet makes the "t" sound, like the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Tav ת‎. In some older ways of speaking, like in Temani and Sephardi traditions, it can sound a little different.

In a special system called gematria, Tet stands for the number nine. If you see it with an apostrophe after it, it means 9,000. This is often used when talking about Hebrew years.

Tet is one of seven letters that get special decorations called tagin when written in a very important book called a Sefer Torah.

Syriac tet

The Syriac tet is a letter in the Syriac alphabet. It is one of many old letters that are related to letters in other languages. This letter is connected to letters like the Phoenician, Hebrew, and Arabic letters, showing how writing has changed over time.

Similar symbols

Main article: Circled plus

A symbol that looks like the Phoenician teth is used for the tensor product, shown as ⊗. This symbol probably came from changing the multiplication sign ×. The Hebrew letter ט‎ also looks similar to another letter called Ʋ.

Character encodings

The letter Teth is used in many old and new writing systems. It appears in Phoenician as ṭēt 𐤈, in Hebrew as ṭēt ט‎, in Aramaic as ṭēṯ 𐡈, in Syriac as ṭēṯ ܛ, and in Arabic as ṭāʾ ط‎. It is also found in Ancient North Arabian as 𐪗‎‎‎, South Arabian as 𐩷, and Geʽez as ጠ. Over time, this letter influenced the Greek letter theta (Θ).