T

This article is about the letter of the Latin alphabet. For the same letterform in the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets, see Te (Cyrillic) and Tau. For other uses, see T (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with ㅜ, Tea, Tee, or various box-drawing characters.

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]

T
T t
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and logographic
Language of origin	Latin language
Sound values	[t] [ʈ] [tʰ] [tʼ] [d] [ð] [t̪] [t͡ʃ] [ɾ] [ʔ] /tiː/
In Unicode	U+0054, U+0074
Alphabetical position	20
History
Development	𐤕‬ Ττ 𐌕 T t
Time period	~−700 to present
Descendants	Th (digraph) ™ ₮ ₸ Ŧ Ť Ţ Ʇ
Sisters	𐍄 Т Ҭ Ћ Ҵ ת ت ܬ ة ࠕ 𐎚 𐎙 ተ ፐ Տ տ Ց ց त ट ત ટ ⶊ
Other
Associated graphs	t(x), th, tzsch
Writing direction	Left-to-right
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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]

History

Phoenician Taw	Western Greek Tau	Etruscan T	Latin T

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.

Use in writing systems

Pronunciation of ⟨t⟩ by language

Orthography	Phonemes
Standard Chinese (Pinyin)	/tʰ/
English	/t/, silent
French	/t/, silent
German	/t/
Portuguese	/t/
Spanish	/t/
Turkish	/t/

English

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.

Other languages

In the orthographies of other languages, ⟨t⟩ is often used for /t/, the voiceless dental plosive /t̪/, or similar sounds.

Other systems

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨t⟩ denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive.

Other uses

Main article: T (disambiguation)

• Unit prefix T, meaning 1,000,000,000,000 times.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

A curly T pictured in the coat of arms of the former Teisko municipality, which was consolidated to Tampere.

• T with diacritics: Ť ť Ṫ ṫ ẗ Ţ ţ Ṭ ṭ Ʈ ʈ Ț ț ƫ Ṱ ṱ Ṯ ṯ Ŧ ŧ Ⱦ ⱦ Ƭ ƭ ᵵ^[3] ᶵ^[4]
• Ꞇ ꞇ : Insular T,^{[lower-alpha 1]} also used by William Pryce to designate the voiceless dental fricative [θ]^[5]
• ᫎ : Combining small insular t was used in the Ormulum^[6]
• ʇ : Turned small t is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
• 𐞯 : Modifier letter small t with retroflex hook is a superscript IPA letter^[7]
• 𝼉 : Latin small letter t with hook and retroflex hook is a symbol for a voiceless retroflex implosive^[8][9]
• 𝼍 : Latin small turned t with curl is a click letter^[10][9]
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to T:^[11]
  • U+1D1B ᴛ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL T
  • U+1D40 ᵀ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL T
  • U+1D57 ᵗ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL T
  • U+1E97 ẗ LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH DIAERESIS
• ₜ : Subscript small t was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902^[12]
• ȶ : T with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics^[13]
• Ʇ ʇ : Turned capital T and turned small t were used in transcriptions of the Dakota language in publications of the American Board of Ethnology in the late 19th century.^[14]
• 𝼪 : Small t with mid-height left hook was used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language.^[15]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

• 𐤕 : Semitic letter Taw, from which the following symbols originally derive:
  • Τ τ : Greek letter Tau
    • Ⲧ ⲧ : Coptic letter Taw, which derives from Greek Tau
    • Т т : Cyrillic letter Te, also derived from Tau
    • 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
      • 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

• ™ : Trademark symbol
• ₮ : Mongolian tögrög
• ₸ : Kazakhstani tenge
• ৳ : Bangladeshi taka

Other representations

Computing

Character information

Preview	T		t		Ｔ		ｔ
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

Other

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Tango	▄▄▄ ⓘ

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling)	British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling)	Braille dots-2345 Unified English Braille

• 
  The letter T in German Sign Language

Notes

1. Unicode treats representation of letters of the Latin alphabet written in insular script as a typeface choice that needs no separate coding. U+A786 Ꞇ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER INSULAR T and U+A787 ꞇ LATIN SMALL LETTER INSULAR T are provided for use by phonetics specialists.^[5]
2. Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

References

1. "T", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "tee", op. cit.
2. Lewand, Robert. "Relative Frequencies of Letters in General English Plain text". Cryptographical Mathematics. Central College. Archived from the original on July 8, 2008. Retrieved June 25, 2008.
3. Constable, Peter (September 30, 2003). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 11, 2017. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
4. Constable, Peter (April 19, 2004). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 11, 2017. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
5. Everson, Michael (August 6, 2006). "L2/06-266: Proposal to add Latin letters and a Greek symbol to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on August 19, 2013. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
6. Everson, Michael; West, Andrew (October 5, 2020). "L2/20-268: Revised proposal to add ten characters for Middle English to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 24, 2020. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
7. Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (November 8, 2020). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on July 30, 2021. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
8. Miller, Kirk (July 11, 2020). "L2/20-125R: Unicode request for expected IPA retroflex letters and similar letters with hooks" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 8, 2022. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
9. Anderson, Deborah (December 7, 2020). "L2/21-021: Reference doc numbers for L2/20-266R "Consolidated code chart of proposed phonetic characters" and IPA etc. code point and name changes" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on January 8, 2021. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
10. Miller, Kirk; Sands, Bonny (July 10, 2020). "L2/20-115R: Unicode request for additional phonetic click letters" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 8, 2022. Retrieved October 13, 2022.
11. Everson, Michael; et al. (March 20, 2002). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on February 19, 2018. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
12. Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (January 27, 2009). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 11, 2017. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
13. Cook, Richard; Everson, Michael (September 20, 2001). "L2/01-347: Proposal to add six phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on October 11, 2017. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
14. Everson, Michael; Jacquerye, Denis; Lilley, Chris (July 26, 2012). "L2/12-270: Proposal for the addition of ten Latin characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on March 30, 2019. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
15. Miller, Kirk; Rees, Neil (July 16, 2021). "L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on September 7, 2021. Retrieved October 13, 2022.

External links

• Media related to T at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of T at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of t at Wiktionary