Phonemic representation b, v Numerical value 2 | Position in alphabet 2 | |
Bet, Beth, Beh, or Vet is the second letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Bēt , Hebrew Bēt ב, Aramaic Bēth , Syriac Bēṯ ܒ, and Arabic Bāʾ ب Its sound value is a Voiced bilabial stop ⟨b⟩ or a Voiced labiodental fricative ⟨v⟩. This letter's name means "house" in various Semitic languages (Arabic bayt, Akkadian bītu, bētu, Hebrew: bayiṯ, Phoenician bt etc.; ultimately all from Proto-Semitic *bayt-), and appears to derive from an Egyptian hieroglyph of a house by acrophony.
Contents
- Origin
- Arabic b
- Hebrew Bet Vet
- Bet with the dagesh
- Bet without the dagesh Vet
- Mystical Significance of
- References
The Phoenician letter gave rise to, among others, the Greek Beta, Latin B, and Cyrillic Б, В.
Origin
The name bet is derived from the West Semitic word for "house", and the shape of the letter derives from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph that may have been based on the Egyptian hieroglyph Pr
which depicts a house.
Arabic bāʾ
The Arabic letter ب is named باء bāʾ (bāʔ). It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:
The letter normally renders /b/ sound, except in some names and loanwords where it can also render /p/, often arabized as /b/. (as in برسيل (Persil). For /p/, it may be used interchangeably with the Persian letter پ - pe (with 3 dots) in this case.
Hebrew Bet / Vet
Hebrew spelling: בֵּית
The Hebrew letter represents two different phonemes: a "b" sound (/b/) (bet) and a "v" sound (/v/) (vet). The two are distinguished by a dot (called a dagesh) in the centre of the letter for /b/ and no dot for /v/.
This letter is named bet and vet, following the modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, bet and vet (/bɛjt/), in Israel and by most Jews familiar with Hebrew, although some non-Israeli Ashkenazi speakers pronounce it beis and veis (/bejs/). It is also named beth, following the Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, in academic circles.
In modern Hebrew the frequency of the usage of bet, out of all the letters, is 4.98%.
Bet with the dagesh
When the Bet has a "dot" in its center, known as a dagesh, then it represents /b/. There are various rules in Hebrew grammar that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.
Bet without the dagesh (Vet)
When this letter appears as ב without the dagesh ("dot") in its center then it represents a voiced labiodental fricative: /v/.
Mystical Significance of ב
Bet in gematria symbolizes the number 2.
As a prefix, the letter bet may function as a preposition meaning "in", "at", or "with".
Bet is the first letter of the Torah. As Bet is the number 2 in gematria, this is said to symbolize that there are two parts to Torah: the Written Torah and the Oral Torah.
Rashi points out that the letter is closed on three sides and open on one; this is to teach you that you may question about what happened after creation, but not what happened before it, or what is above the heavens or below the earth.
In set theory, the beth numbers stand for powers of infinite sets.
In the Syriac alphabet, the second letter is ܒ — Beth (ܒܝܼܬ). It is one of six letters that represents two associated sounds (the others are Gimel, Dalet, Kaph, Pe and Taw). When Beth has a hard pronunciation (qûššāyâ) it is a [b]. When Beth has a soft pronunciation (rûkkāḵâ) it is traditionally pronounced as a [v], similar to its Hebrew form. However, in eastern dialects, the soft Beth is more often pronounced as a [w], and can form diphthongs with its preceding vowel. Whether Beth should be pronounced as a hard or soft sound is generally determined by its context within a word. However, wherever it is traditionally geminate within a word, even in dialects that no longer distinguish double consonants, it is hard. In the West Syriac dialect, some speakers always pronounce Beth with its hard sound.
Beth, when attached to the beginning of a word, represents the preposition 'in, with, at'. As a numeral, the letter represents the number 2, and, using various systems of dashes above or below, can stand for 2,000 and 20,000.