:T
{{Short description|20th letter of the Latin alphabet}}
{{About|the letter of the Latin alphabet|the same letterform in the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets|Te (Cyrillic)|and|Tau|other uses}}
{{Distinguish|text=ㅜ, Tea, Tee, or various box-drawing characters}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=July 2024}}
{{protection padlock|small=yes}}
{{Infobox grapheme
|name = T
|letter = T t
|script=Latin script
|type=Alphabet
|typedesc=ic and logographic
|language=Latin language
|phonemes={{grid list|[{{IPA link|t}}]|[{{IPA link|ʈ}}]|[{{IPA link|tʰ}}]|[{{IPA link|tʼ}}]|[{{IPA link|d}}]|[{{IPA link|ð}}]|[{{IPA link|t̪}}]|[{{IPA link|t͡ʃ}}]|[{{IPA link|ɾ}}]|[{{IPA link|ʔ}}]|{{IPAc-en|t|iː}}}}
|unicode=U+0054, U+0074
|alphanumber=20
|number=
|fam1=
|fam2=File:Proto-semiticT-01.svg
|fam3=File:Prototaw.svg
|fam4=File:Phoenician taw.svg
|fam5=𐤕
|fam6=Ττ
|fam7=𐌕
|usageperiod={{circa}} 700 BCE to present
|children={{grid list|Th (digraph)|™|₮|₸|Ŧ|Ť|Ţ|Ʇ}}
|sisters={{grid list|𐍄|Т|Ҭ|Ћ|Ҵ|ת|ت|ܬ|ة|ࠕ|𐎚|𐎙|ተ|ፐ|Տ տ|Ց ց|त|ट|ત|ટ|ⶊ}}
|equivalents=
|direction=Left-to-right
|image=File:Latin_letter_T.svg
|imageclass=skin-invert-image
}}
{{special characters|Unicode}}
{{Latin letter info|t}}
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 {{IPAc-en|'|t|iː|audio=LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-T.wav}}), plural tees."T", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "tee", op. cit.
It is derived from the Semitic Taw 𐤕 of the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew script (Aramaic and Hebrew Taw ת/𐡕/File:Taw.svg, 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.{{cite web|url=http://pages.central.edu/emp/LintonT/classes/spring01/cryptography/letterfreq.html |title=Relative Frequencies of Letters in General English Plain text |last=Lewand |first=Robert |work=Cryptographical Mathematics |publisher=Central College |access-date=2008-06-25 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080708193159/http://pages.central.edu/emp/LintonT/classes/spring01/cryptography/letterfreq.html |archive-date=2008-07-08 }}
History
| class="wikitable"
! Phoenician ! Western Greek ! Etruscan ! Latin |
| --align=center |
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 {{IPAblink|t}} in each of these, and it has also kept its original basic shape in most of these alphabets.
Use in writing systems
| class="wikitable mw-collapsible"
|+ Pronunciation of {{angbr|t}} by language ! Orthography ! Phonemes |
| {{nwr|Standard Chinese}} (Pinyin)
|{{IPAslink|tʰ}} |
|---|
| English
|{{IPAslink|t}}, silent |
| French
|{{IPAslink|t}}, silent |
| German
|{{IPAslink|t}} |
| Portuguese
|{{IPAslink|t}} |
| Spanish
|{{IPAslink|t}} |
| Turkish
| {{IPAslink|t}} |
=English=
In English, {{angbr|t}} usually denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive (International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA: {{IPAslink|t}}), as in tart, tee, or ties, often with aspiration at the beginnings of words or before stressed vowels. The letter {{angbr|t}} corresponds to the affricate {{IPA|/t͡ʃ/}} in some words as a result of yod-coalescence (for example, in words ending in -"ture", such as future).
A common digraph is {{angbr|th}}, which usually represents a dental fricative, but occasionally represents {{IPA|/t/}} (as in Thomas and thyme). The digraph {{angbr|ti}} often corresponds to the sound {{IPA|/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.
=Other languages=
In the orthographies of other languages, {{angbr|t}} is often used for {{IPA|/t/}}, the voiceless dental plosive {{IPA|/t̪/}}, or similar sounds.
=Other systems=
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, {{angbr IPA|t}} denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive.
Other uses
{{main|T (disambiguation)}}
- Unit prefix T, meaning 1,000,000,000,000 times.
Related characters
=Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets=
- 𐤕 : Semitic letter Taw, from which the following symbols originally derive:
- Τ τ : Greek letter Tau
- {{Script|Copt|Ⲧ ⲧ}} : Coptic letter Taw, which derives from Greek Tau
- Т т : Cyrillic letter Te, also derived from Tau
- {{Script|Goth|𐍄}} : 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
- {{Script|Runr|ᛏ}} : 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.
=Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations=
- {{not a typo|™}} : Trademark symbol
- ₮ : Mongolian tögrög
- ₸ : Kazakhstani tenge
- ৳ : Bangladeshi taka
{{anchor|Codes for computing}}
Other representations
=Computing <span class="anchor" id="Computing codes"></span>=
{{charmap
| 0054 | 0074 | FF34 | FF54 | name1 = Latin Capital Letter T | name2 = Latin Small Letter T | name3 = FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T | name4 = FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER T
| map1 = EBCDIC family | map1char1 = E3 | map1char2 = A3
| map2 = ASCII{{efn|Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.}} | map2char1 = 54 | map2char2 = 74
}}
=Other=
{{Letter other reps
|NATO=Tango
|Morse=–
|Character=T
|Braille=⠞
|fingerspelling=T
}}
|height = 120
|File:German Sign Language letter T.svg
|The letter T in German Sign Language}}
{{clear}}
Notes
{{Notelist}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- {{Commons-inline|T}}
- {{Wiktionary-inline|T}}
- {{Wiktionary-inline|t}}
{{Latin alphabet|T|}}
{{Authority control}}