Taw
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Т |
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Taw, tav, or taf is the twenty-second and last
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek tau (Τ), Latin T, and Cyrillic Т.
Origins
Taw is believed to be derived from the
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Hieroglyph | Proto-Sinaitic | Phoenician | Paleo-Hebrew | ||
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Arabic tāʾ
The letter is named tāʼ. It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:
Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
---|---|---|---|---|
Glyph form: (Help) |
ت | ـت | ـتـ | تـ |
Final ـَتْ (
Recently, the isolated ت has been used online as an emoticon, because it resembles a smiling face.[1]
Tā' marbūṭa
An alternative form called tāʼ marbūṭa (ـَة, ة) (تَاءْ مَرْبُوطَة), "bound tāʼ ") is used at the end of words to mark feminine gender for nouns and adjectives. Regular tāʼ, to distinguish it from tāʼ marbūṭa, is referred to as tāʼ maftūḥa (تَاءْ مَفْتُوحَة, "open tāʼ").
Position in word | Isolated | Final | Medial | Initial |
---|---|---|---|---|
Glyph form: (Help) |
ة | ـة | ـة | ة |
In words such as رِسَالَة ('letter, message, epistle'), the
However, when a word ending with a tāʼ marbūṭa is suffixed with a grammatical case ending or any other suffix, the /t/ is clearly pronounced. For example, the word رِسَالَة ('letter, message', 'epistle') is pronounced as risāla in pausa but is pronounced risālatun in the nominative case (/un/ being the nominative case ending), risālatin in the genitive case (/in/ being the genitive case ending), and risālatan in the accusative case (/an/ being the accusative case ending). When the possessive suffix -ī ('my') is added, it becomes risālatī ('my letter') . The /t/ is also always pronounced when the word is in construct state (iḍāfa), for example in Risālat al-Ghufrān ('The Epistle of Forgiveness').
The isolated and final forms of this letter combine the shape of hāʼ (
Hebrew tav
Orthographic variants | ||||
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Various print fonts | Cursive Hebrew |
Rashi script | ||
Serif | Sans-serif | Monospaced
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ת | ת | ת |
Hebrew spelling: תָו
Hebrew pronunciation
The letter tav in
Variations on written form and pronunciation
The letter tav is one of the six letters that can receive a
. Bet, kaph and pe have their sound values changed in modern Hebrew from the fricative to the plosive, by adding a dagesh. In modern Hebrew, the other three do not change their pronunciation with or without a dagesh, but they have had alternate pronunciations at other times and places.In traditional
Tav with a geresh (ת׳) is sometimes used in order to represent the TH digraph in loanwords.
Significance of tav
In
In representing names from foreign languages, a geresh or chupchik can also be placed after the tav (ת׳), making it represent /θ/. (See also: Hebraization of English)
In Judaism
Tav is the last letter of the Hebrew word emet, which means 'truth'. The midrash explains that emet is made up of the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph, mem, and tav: אמת). Sheqer (שקר, falsehood), on the other hand, is made up of the 19th, 20th, and 21st (and penultimate) letters.
Thus, truth is all-encompassing, while falsehood is narrow and deceiving. In Jewish mythology it was the word emet that was carved into the head of the golem which ultimately gave it life. But when the letter aleph was erased from the golem's forehead, what was left was "met"—dead. And so the golem died.
Ezekiel 9:4 depicts a vision in which the tav plays a Passover role similar to the blood on the lintel and doorposts of a Hebrew home in Egypt.[2] In Ezekiel's vision, the Lord has his angels separate the demographic wheat from the chaff by going through Jerusalem, the capital city of ancient Israel, and inscribing a mark, a tav, "upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof."
In Ezekiel's vision, then, the Lord is counting tav-marked Israelites as worthwhile to spare, but counts the people worthy of annihilation who lack the tav and the critical attitude it signifies. In other words, looking askance at a culture marked by dire moral decline is a kind of shibboleth for loyalty and zeal for God.[3]
Sayings with taf
"From aleph to taf" describes something from beginning to end, the Hebrew equivalent of the English "From A to Z."
Syriac taw
In the
ʾEsṭrangēlā (classical) |
Maḏnḥāyā (eastern) |
Serṭo (western) |
Unicode character |
---|---|---|---|
ܬ ܬ ܬ |
Character encodings
Preview | ת | ت | ܬ | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | HEBREW LETTER TAV | ARABIC LETTER TEH | SYRIAC LETTER TAW | |||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 1514 | U+05EA | 1578 | U+062A | 1836 | U+072C |
UTF-8 | 215 170 | D7 AA | 216 170 | D8 AA | 220 172 | DC AC |
Numeric character reference | ת |
ת |
ت |
ت |
ܬ |
ܬ |
Preview | ࠕ | 𐎚 | 𐡕 | 𐤕 | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | SAMARITAN LETTER TOF | UGARITIC LETTER TO | IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER TAW | PHOENICIAN LETTER TAU | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 2069 | U+0815 | 66458 | U+1039A | 67669 | U+10855 | 67861 | U+10915 |
UTF-8 | 224 160 149 | E0 A0 95 | 240 144 142 154 | F0 90 8E 9A | 240 144 161 149 | F0 90 A1 95 | 240 144 164 149 | F0 90 A4 95 |
UTF-16 | 2069 | 0815 | 55296 57242 | D800 DF9A | 55298 56405 | D802 DC55 | 55298 56597 | D802 DD15 |
Numeric character reference | ࠕ |
ࠕ |
𐎚 |
𐎚 |
𐡕 |
𐡕 |
𐤕 |
𐤕 |
See also
Footnotes
- ^ "Smileys Symbols ㋡ ㋛ ☺ ☹ ☻ 〠 シ ッ ツ ヅ". www.i2symbol.com. Retrieved 2021-07-22.
- ^ Exodus 12:7,12.
- ^ Cf. the New Testament's condemnation of lukewarmness in Revelation 3:15-16