# T

T, or t, is the twentieth letter 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 /ˈtiː/ ), 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

| Phoenician Taw | Western Greek Tau | Etruscan T | Latin T |
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 [t] in each of these, and it has also kept its original basic shape in most of these alphabets.

## Use in writing systems

Pronunciation of ⟨t⟩ by language :
| Orthography | Phonemes |
| Standard Chinese (Pinyin) | /tʰ/ |
| English | /t/, silent |
| French | /t/, silent |
| German | /t/ |
| Portuguese | /t/ |
| Spanish | /t/ |
| Turkish | /t/ |

### English

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

### Other systems

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

## Other uses

* Unit prefix T, meaning 1,000,000,000,000 times.

## Related characters
### Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

* T with diacritics: Ť ť Ṫ ṫ ẗ Ţ ţ Ṭ ṭ Ʈ ʈ Ț ț ƫ Ṱ ṱ Ṯ ṯ Ŧ ŧ Ⱦ ⱦ Ƭ ƭ ᵵ ᶵ
* Ꞇ ꞇ : Insular T, also used by William Pryce to designate the voiceless dental fricative [θ]
* ᫎ : Combining small insular t was used in the Ormulum
* ʇ : Turned small t is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
* 𐞯 : Modifier letter small t with retroflex hook is a superscript IPA letter
* 𝼉 : Latin small letter t with hook and retroflex hook is a symbol for a voiceless retroflex implosive
* 𝼍 : Latin small turned t with curl is a click letter
* Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to T:
** U+1D1B ᴛ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL T
** U+1D40 ᵀ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL T
** U+1D57 ᵗ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL T
** U+1E97 ẗ LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH DIAERESIS
* ₜ : Subscript small t was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902
* ȶ : T with curl is used in Sino-Tibetanist linguistics
* Ʇ ʇ : Turned capital T and turned small t were used in transcriptions of the Dakota language in publications of the American Board of Ethnology in the late 19th century.
* 𝼪 : Small t with mid-height left hook was used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language.

### Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

* 𐤕 : Semitic letter Taw, from which the following symbols originally derive:
** Τ τ : Greek letter Tau
*** Ⲧ ⲧ : Coptic letter Taw, which derives from Greek Tau
*** Т т : Cyrillic letter Te, also derived from Tau
*** 𐍄 : Gothic letter tius, which derives from Greek Tau
*** 𐌕 : Old Italic T, which derives from Greek Tau, and is the ancestor of modern Latin T
**** ᛏ : Runic letter teiwaz, which probably derives from old Italic T
* ፐ : One of the 26 consonantal letters of the Ge'ez script. The Ge'ez abugida developed under the influence of Christian scripture by adding obligatory vocalic diacritics to the consonantal letters. Pesa ፐ is based on Tawe ተ.

### Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

* ™ : Trademark symbol
* ₮ : Mongolian tögrög
* ₸ : Kazakhstani tenge
* ৳ : Bangladeshi taka

## Other representations
### Computing

Character information :
| Preview | T | T | t | t | Ｔ | Ｔ | ｔ | ｔ |
| Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T | LATIN SMALL LETTER T | LATIN SMALL LETTER T | FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T | FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER T | FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER T | FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER T |
| Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
| Unicode | 84 | U+0054 | 116 | U+0074 | 65332 | U+FF34 | 65364 | U+FF54 |
| UTF-8 | 84 | 54 | 116 | 74 | 239 188 180 | EF BC B4 | 239 189 148 | EF BD 94 |
| Numeric character reference | &#84; | &#x54; | &#116; | &#x74; | &#65332; | &#xFF34; | &#65364; | &#xFF54; |
| EBCDIC family | 227 | E3 | 163 | A3 | | | | |
| ASCII | 84 | 54 | 116 | 74 | | | | |

### Other

| NATO phonetic | Morse code |
| Tango | ▄▄▄ |
| Signal flag | Flag semaphore | American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling) | British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling) | Braille dots-2345 Unified English Braille |
* The letter T in German Sign Language