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20th letter of the Latin alphabet From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 /ˈtiː/), plural tees.[1]
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Usage | |
Writing system | Latin script |
Type | Alphabetic and logographic |
Language of origin | Latin language |
Sound values | |
In Unicode | U+0054, U+0074 |
Alphabetical position | 20 |
History | |
Development | |
Time period | ~−700 to present |
Descendants | |
Sisters | |
Other | |
Associated graphs | t(x), th, tzsch |
Writing direction | Left-to-right |
It is derived from the Semitic Taw 𐤕 of the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew script (Aramaic and Hebrew Taw ת/𐡕/, 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.[2]
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 [t] in each of these, and it has also kept its original basic shape in most of these alphabets.
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 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). 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.
In a few words of modern French origin, the letter T is silent at the end of a word; these include croquet and debut.
In the orthographies of other languages, ⟨t⟩ is often used for /t/, the voiceless dental plosive /t̪/, or similar sounds.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨t⟩ denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive.
Preview | T | t | T | t | ||||
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Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T | LATIN SMALL LETTER T | FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T | FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER T | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 84 | U+0054 | 116 | U+0074 | 65332 | U+FF34 | 65364 | U+FF54 |
UTF-8 | 84 | 54 | 116 | 74 | 239 188 180 | EF BC B4 | 239 189 148 | EF BD 94 |
Numeric character reference | T | T | t | t | T | T | t | t |
EBCDIC family | 227 | E3 | 163 | A3 | ||||
ASCII[lower-alpha 2] | 84 | 54 | 116 | 74 |
NATO phonetic | Morse code |
Tango |
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Signal flag | Flag semaphore | American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling) | British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling) | Braille dots-2345 Unified English Braille |