Bet (letter)

Bet, also known as Beth, Beh, or Vet, is the second letter of the Semitic writing systems. It appears in many languages, including Phoenician bēt, Hebrew bēt, Aramaic bēṯ, Syriac bēṯ, and Arabic bāʾ. This letter makes the sound “b” or sometimes “v.”

The name of the letter means “house” in these languages. It comes from an ancient Egyptian hieroglyph that looked like a house. This idea of a house was taken from the sound of the word in Proto-Semitic, an early language that influenced many others.

The Phoenician version of Bet helped create letters in other alphabets. It inspired the Greek letter beta (Β, β), the Latin letter B (B, b), and the Cyrillic letters Be (Б, б) and Ve (В, в). It also influenced the Armenian letter Ben (Բ, բ).

Origin

The name bet comes from a West Semitic word meaning "house," similar to the Hebrew word בַּיִת, which also means "house." The shape of the letter bet is thought to have started from a very old symbol called Proto-Sinaitic. This symbol might have been inspired by an Egyptian picture that shows a house.

Arabic bāʾ

The Arabic letter ب is named بَاءْ bāʾ (bāʔ). It can look different depending on where it appears in a word.

Bāʾ usually makes the /b/ sound. But in some names and borrowed words, it can also make the /p/ sound, often changed to /b/, like in بَرْسِيلْ (Persil). For the /p/ sound, it can sometimes be used like the Persian letter پ - pe (with 3 dots).

Bāʾ is the first letter of the Quran and the first letter of Basmala. When bāʾ is used as a prefix, it can mean "by" or "with". Some explanations of the Quran think that bāʾ at the start means "by My (God's) cause (all is present and happen)".

Main article: Pe (Persian letter)

A special form of bāʾ, with three dots below instead of one, is called pe. This form is used in the Persian alphabet and the Kurdish alphabet to show the /p/ sound, which does not exist in Arabic. It is written as:

Hebrew bet

The Hebrew letter בֵּית‎ can make two sounds: "b" (/b/) and "v" (/v/). When Hebrew is written with special marks called niqqud diacritics, the two sounds are shown by a dot in the middle of the letter called a dagesh. The dot means the sound is "b", and no dot means the sound is "v". In everyday writing without these marks, the letter looks the same for both sounds.

In modern Hebrew, this letter is most often called bet or vet. Some people, especially in certain areas, may call it beis or veis. As a number, it stands for 2. It is also the first letter of the Torah, which is very important in Jewish tradition.

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
ב	ב	ב

Syriac beth

In the Syriac alphabet, the second letter is ܒ — Beth (ܒܹܝܬ). It is one of six letters that can make two different sounds. When Beth is spoken with a strong sound, it makes the sound b. When spoken softly, it is usually pronounced like v, much like in Hebrew. But in some areas, the soft Beth sounds more like w and can change the sound of the vowel before it. The way Beth is pronounced depends on where it appears in a word. In some places, Beth is always spoken with its strong sound.

Beth
Madnḫaya Beth
Serṭo Beth
Esṭrangela Beth

Other uses

Mathematics

In set theory, the beth numbers represent the powers of infinite sets.

Character encodings

The Bet letter appears in several ancient writing systems. It is part of the Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Arabic scripts, among others. The sound it makes can be like the "b" in "bat" or the "v" in "very".