Phonemic representation tˤ Numerical value 9 | Position in alphabet 9 | |
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Teth, also written as Ṭēth or Tet, is the ninth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Ṭēt , Hebrew Ṭēt ט, Aramaic Ṭēth , Syriac Ṭēṯ ܛ, and Arabic Ṭāʾ ط. It is 16th in modern Arabic order. The Persian Ța is pronounced as a hard "t" sound and is the 19th letter in the modern Persian alphabet. The Phoenician letter also gave rise to the Greek theta (Θ), originally an aspirated voiceless alveolar stop but now used for the voiceless dental fricative.
Contents
The sound value of Teth is /tˤ/, one of the Semitic emphatic consonants.
Origins
The Phoenician letter name ṭēth means "wheel", but the letter possibly (according to Brian Colless) continues a Middle Bronze Age glyph named ṭab "good", Tav in Aramaic and Tov טוב in Hebrew, ṭayyib طَيّب in modern Arabic, based on the nfr "good" hieroglyph:
Jewish scripture books about the "holy letters" from the 10th century and on discuss the connection or origin of the letter Teth with the word Tov, and the Bible uses the word 'Tov' in alphabetic chapters to depict the letter.
Arabic ṭāʾ
The letter is named ṭāʾ ; Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation: /tˤ/.
Hebrew Tet
The Hebrew spelling of name of the letter: טֵית
Hebrew pronunciation
In Modern Hebrew, Tet represents a voiceless alveolar plosive /t/, although this can be pharyngealized to produce [tˤ] in traditional Temani and Sephardi pronunciation.
Significance
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., 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.
Similar symbols
A symbol similar to the Phoenician teth is used for the tensor product, as