Bet (letter)

Bet, Beth, or Vet is the second letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Ivrit|ב Syriac Unicode|ܒ and Arabic alphabet "ArabDIN|bāʾ" _ar. ﺏ. Its value is a voiced bilabial plosive, IPA IPA|/b/.

This letter's name means "house" in various Semitic languages (Hebrew: "bayit", Arabic: "bayt"; ultimately all from Proto-Semitic ), and appears to derive from a Middle Bronze Age picture of a house by acrophony.

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Beta, Latin B, and Cyrillic Б, В.

Hebrew Bet / Vet

The Hebrew letter represents two different phonemes: a "b" sound (IPA|/b/) (bet) and a "v" sound (IPA|/v/) (vet). The two are distinguished by a dot (called a dagesh) in the centre of the letter for IPA|/b/ and no dot for IPA|/v/.

This letter is named "bet" and "vet", following the modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, "bet" and "vet" (IPA|/bɛjt/), in Israel and by most Jews familiar with Hebrew, although some non-Israeli Ashkenazi speakers pronounce it "beis" and "veis" (IPA|/bejs/), and some Jews pronounce it "beth" and "veth" (IPA|/beθ/). It is also named "beth", following the Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, in academic circles.

Variations on written form/pronunciation:

Bet with the dagesh

When the Bet has a "dot" in its center, known as a dagesh, then it represents IPA|/b/. There are various rules in Hebrew grammar that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.

Bet without the dagesh (Vet)

When this letter appears as ב "without" the dagesh ("dot") in its center then it represents a voiced labiodental fricative: IPA|/v/.

ignificance of ב, mystical and otherwise

Bet in gematria symbolizes the number 2.

As a prefix, the letter bet may function 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.

Rashi points out that the letter is closed on three sides and open on one; this is to teach you that you may question about what happened after creation, but not what happened before it, or what is above the heavens or below the earth.

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

yriac Beth

In the Syriac alphabet, the second letter is _sy. ܒ — Beth ( _sy. ܒܝܬ). It is one of six letters that represents two associated sounds (the others are Gimel, Dalet, Kaph, Pe and Taw). When Beth has a hard pronunciation ("qûššāyâ") it is a [b] . When Beth has a soft pronunciation ("unicode|rûkkāḵâ") it is traditionally pronounced as a [v] . However, in eastern dialects, the soft Beth is more often pronounced as a [w] , and can form diphthongs with its preceding vowel. Whether Beth should be pronounced as a hard or soft sound is generally determined by its context within a word. However, wherever it is traditionally 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.

Arabic transl|sem|bāʾ

The letter is named "transl|sem|bāʾ", and is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

"transl|sem|Bāʾ-kasra" (بِـ, IPA|/bi/) is used as a prefix in Arabic approximately meaning "with".

References