T, or t, is the twentieth let****ter 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 ), plural tees. 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.

History

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 in each of these, and it has also kept its original basic shape in most of these alphabets.

Use in writing systems

English

In English, ⟨t⟩ usually denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive (International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA: ), 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 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 (as in Thomas and thyme). The digraph ⟨ti⟩ often corresponds to the sound (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, the voiceless dental plosive , or similar sounds.

Other systems

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

Other uses

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

Other representations

Computing

Other