Bet (letter)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the Semitic letter. For the use of this letter in mathematics, see Beth number.
For other uses, see Bet (disambiguation).
Б

Bet, Beth, Beh, or Vet is the second

voiced bilabial stop ⟨b⟩ or the voiced labiodental fricative
⟨v⟩.

The letter's name means "house" in various Semitic languages (Arabic

Egyptian hieroglyph of a house by acrophony
.

O1

The Phoenician letter gave rise to, among others, the

В, в
).

Origin

The name bet is derived from the West Semitic word for "

Proto-Sinaitic glyph that may have been based on the Egyptian hieroglyph Pr

O1

which depicts a house.

Hieroglyph Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Paleo-Hebrew
O1
 Bet

Arabic bāʾ

The Arabic letter ب is named بَاءْ bāʾ (bāʔ). It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

Position in word Isolated Final Medial Initial
Glyph form:
(Help) 		ب‎ ـب‎ ـبـ‎ بـ‎

The letter normally renders /b/ sound, except in some names and

پ
- pe (with 3 dots) in this case.

Interpretation of ب‎

Bāʾ is the first letter of the

preposition meaning "by" or "with". Some tafsirs interpreted the positioning of bāʾ as the opener of the Qur'an with "by My (God's) cause (all is present and happen)".[2]

Hebrew bet

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts Cursive
Hebrew 		Rashi
script
Serif Sans-serif
Monospaced
ב ב ב

Hebrew spelling: בֵּית‎

The Hebrew letter represents two different phonemes: a "b" sound (/b/) (bet) and a "v" sound (/v/) (vet). When Hebrew is written Ktiv menuqad (with niqqud diacritics) the two are distinguished by a dot (called a dagesh) in the centre of the letter for /b/ and no dot for /v/. In modern Hebrew, the more commonly used Ktiv hasar niqqud spelling, which does not use diacritics, does not visually distinguish between the two phonemes.

This letter is named bet and vet, following the modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, bet and vet (/bet/), in Israel and by most Jews familiar with Hebrew, although some non-Israeli Ashkenazi speakers pronounce it beis (or bais)[3] and veis (/bejs/) (or vais or vaiz).[4] 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%.

Variations on written form/pronunciation

Main article: Modern Hebrew phonology
Name Symbol IPA Transliteration Example
Vet ב‎ /v/ v vote
Bet בּ‎ /b/ b boat

Bet with the dagesh

When the Bet appears as בּ‎ with a "dot" in its center, known as a

Hebrew grammar
that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.

Bet without the dagesh (Vet)

In Ktiv menuqad spelling, which uses diacritics, when the letter appears as ב‎ without the dagesh ("dot") in its center it represents a voiced labiodental fricative: /v/. In Ktiv hasar niqqud spelling, without diacritics, the letter without the dot may represent either phoneme.

Mystical significance of ב‎

Bet in gematria represents the number 2.

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. According to Jewish legend, the letter Bet was specially chosen among the 22 letters in Hebrew by God as the first letter of Torah as it begins with "Bereshit (In the beginning) God created heaven and earth."[5]

Genesis Rabbah points out that the letter is closed on three sides and open on one; this is indicate that one can investigate what happened after creation, but not what happened before it, or what is above the heavens or below the earth.[6]

In mathematics

In set theory, the beth numbers stand for powers of infinite sets.

Syriac beth

Beth
Madnḫaya Beth
Serṭo Beth
Esṭrangela Beth

In the

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.

Character encodings

Character information
Preview ב ب ܒ ࠁ ℶ
Unicode name HEBREW LETTER BET ARABIC LETTER BEH SYRIAC LETTER BETH SAMARITAN LETTER BIT BET SYMBOL
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 1489 U+05D1 1576 U+0628 1810 U+0712 2049 U+0801 8502 U+2136
UTF-8 215 145 D7 91 216 168 D8 A8 220 146 DC 92 224 160 129 E0 A0 81 226 132 182 E2 84 B6
Numeric character reference ב ב ب ب ܒ ܒ ࠁ ࠁ ℶ ℶ
Named character reference ℶ


Character information
Preview 𐎁 𐡁 𐤁
Unicode name UGARITIC LETTER BETA IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER BETH PHOENICIAN LETTER BET
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 66433 U+10381 67649 U+10841 67841 U+10901
UTF-8 240 144 142 129 F0 90 8E 81 240 144 161 129 F0 90 A1 81 240 144 164 129 F0 90 A4 81
UTF-16 55296 57217 D800 DF81 55298 56385 D802 DC41 55298 56577 D802 DD01
Numeric character reference 𐎁 𐎁 𐡁 𐡁 𐤁 𐤁

See also

  • Bayt/Beit/Beth/Bet (disambiguation)
    , meaning 'house' in various Semitic languages; part of many place-names

References

  1. ^ "Mengapa Basmalah Diawali Huruf 'Ba'?". NU Online (in Indonesian). Retrieved 2024-04-10.
  2. ^ Syafirin, Muhammad (2022-01-05). "Menyingkap Tabir Huruf Ba'; Muara Al-Qur'an Sumber Segala Ilmu". Darul Kamal Islamic College (in Indonesian). Retrieved 2024-04-10.
  3. ^ The school system Bais Yaakov or BaisYakov.net in Baltimore
  4. ^ "Learning Alef-Bais". October 22, 2012. "His Hebrew Morah is teaching the sounds of the alef bais based on English ... For Vais, since there are no Hebrew words that begin with a vais, ..." (whether or not it's true that "no Hebrew..." is not the point. It's that the teacher uses VAIZ)
  5. ^ Ginzberg, Louis (1909). The Legends of the Jews Vol. I : Alphabet (Translated by Henrietta Szold) Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
  6. ^ Genesis Rabbah 1:10

External links

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