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 |
| Phonetic usage | [t] [ʈ] [tʰ] [tʼ] [d] [ð] [t̪] [t͡ʃ] [ɾ] [ʔ] /tiː/ |
| Unicode codepoint | U+0054, U+0074 |
| Alphabetical position | 20 |
| History | |
| Development | |
| 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 | |
| Other letters commonly used with | 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]
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, 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
| Languages in italics are not usually written using the Latin alphabet | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Dialect(s) | Pronunciation (IPA) | Environment | Notes |
| Mandarin Chinese | Standard | /tʰ/ | Pinyin romanization | |
| English | /t/, silent | See English orthography | ||
| French | /t/, silent | See French orthography | ||
| 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 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.
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.)
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
- Unit prefix T, meaning 1,000,000,000,000 times.
Related characters
- 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,[a] 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
- ፐ : One of the 26 consonantal letters of 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
Other representations
Computing
| 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 1 | 84 | 54 | 116 | 74 | ||||
- 1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
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
