Teth

Origins

The Phoenician letter name sem may mean "spinning wheel" pictured as [[File:Phoenician_teth.svg|class=skin-invert-image|10px]] (compare Hebrew root (ṭ-w-y) meaning 'spinning' (a thread) which begins with Teth). According to another hypothesis (Brian Colless), the letter possibly continues a Middle Bronze Age glyph named sem 'good', Aramaic 'tav', Hebrew 'tov', Syriac ܛܒܐ 'tava', modern Arabic طَيّب 'ṭayyib', all of identical meaning.

Jewish religious books about the "holy letters" from the 10th century onward discuss the connection or origin of the letter Teth with the word tov "good". This is alluded to in a cryptic aggadata in the Talmud Baba Kamma 54b. Additionally the first time the letter "tes" appears in the Torah is in the word "Tov" meaning "good." This was especially emphasized ever since the late 1600s after the Baal Shem Tov became influential, since the letter Teth was in his Acronym standing for Tov, and goodness was part of his philosophy. The acrostic poems of the Bible use 'Tov' to represent the letter (e.g. Psalm 119:65-72).

Arabic ṭāʾ

It has four forms, and the letter does not change its shape depending on its position in the word:

Hebrew tet

The Hebrew spelling of name of the letter:

Hebrew pronunciation

In Modern Hebrew, Tet represents a voiceless alveolar plosive , and is therefore usually homophonic with the abjad's final letter, Tav . However, Tet can be pharyngealized to produce in traditional Temani and Sephardi pronunciation. [tˤ] is also probably the pronunciation in Biblical Hebrew.

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., 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.

Syriac tet

Similar symbols

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A symbol similar to the Phoenician teth is used for the tensor product, as \otimes, but this is presumably an independent development, by modification of the multiplication sign ×. The Hebrew is also visually similar to the letter Ʋ.

Character encodings

|05D8|name1=Hebrew Letter Tet |0637|name2=Arabic Letter Tah |071B|name3=Syriac Letter Teth |0808|name4=Samaritan Letter Tit

|10389|name1=Ugaritic Letter Tet |10848|name2=Imperial Aramaic Letter Teth |10908|name3=Phoenician Letter Tet

Notes

References

References

1. ""ﻄ" U+FEC4 Arabic Letter Tah Medial Form Unicode Character".
2. Albright, William F.. (1969). "The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment". Harvard University Press.