Teth#Hebrew Tet

The Phoenician letter name {{Transliteration|sem|ṭēth}} may mean "spinning wheel"{{Cite book|last=Albright|first=William F.|url=https://archive.org/details/AlbrightTheProtoSinaiticInscriptionsAndTheirDecipherment1969|title=The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1969}} pictured as File:Phoenician_teth.svg (compare Hebrew root {{Script|Hebr|ט-ו-י}} (ṭ-w-y) meaning 'spinning' (a thread) which begins with Teth). According to another hypothesis (Brian Colless{{citation needed|date=November 2017}}), the letter possibly continues a Middle Bronze Age glyph named {{Transliteration|sem|ṭab}} 'good', Aramaic {{Script|Hebr|טַב}} 'tav', Hebrew {{Script/Hebrew|טוב}} 'tov', Syriac ܛܒܐ 'tava', modern Arabic {{lang|ar|طَيّب}} 'ṭayyib', all of identical meaning.

Jewish religious 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).

{{Infobox grapheme

| name = Ṭāʾ طاء

| letter = ط

| script = Arabic script

| type = Abjad

| language = Arabic language

| phonemes = {{IPA link|tˤ}}

| alphanumber = 16

| direction = Right-to-left

| fam2 = 𐤈

| fam3 = 𐡈‎

| fam4 = 𐢋‎

| fam5 =

}}The letter is named {{Transliteration|ar|ALA-LC|ṭāʾ }} {{lang|ar|طَاءْ}}; Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation: {{IPA|/tˤ/}}.

It has four forms, and the letter does not change its shape depending on its position in the word:

{{Arabic alphabet shapes|ط}}

The Hebrew spelling of name of the letter: {{Script/Hebrew|טֵית}}

In Modern Hebrew, Tet represents a voiceless alveolar plosive {{IPA|/t/}}, and is therefore usually homophonic with the abjad's final letter, Tav {{Script|Hebr|ת}}. However, Tet can be pharyngealized to produce {{IPA|[tˤ]}} in traditional Temani and Sephardi pronunciation. [tˤ] is also probably the pronunciation in Biblical Hebrew.

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., {{Script/Hebrew|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.

{{Arabic alphabet shapes|ܛ‎}}

{{main|Circled plus (disambiguation){{!}}Circled plus}}

A symbol similar to the Phoenician teth is used for the tensor product, as $\backslash otimes$, but this is presumably an independent development, by modification of the multiplication sign ×. The Hebrew {{Script/Hebrew|ט}} is also visually similar to the letter Ʋ.

{{charmap

|05D8|name1=Hebrew Letter Tet

|0637|name2=Arabic Letter Tah

|071B|name3=Syriac Letter Teth

|0808|name4=Samaritan Letter Tit

}}

{{charmap

|10389|name1=Ugaritic Letter Tet

|10848|name2=Imperial Aramaic Letter Teth

|10908|name3=Phoenician Letter Tet

}}

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{{commons category|Teth (letter)}}{{Arabic language}}{{Hebrew language}}

{{Northwest Semitic abjad}}

Category:Phoenician alphabet

Category:Arabic letters

Category:Hebrew letters

Category:Urdu letters