Taw

Taw or Tav is the twenty-second and last letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tav Ivrit|ת and Arabic alphabet ArabDIN|Tāʾ _ar. ﺕ. Its original sound value is a voiceless alveolar plosive, IPA IPA|/t/,

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Tau (Τ), Latin T, and Cyrillic Te (Т).

Origins of Taw

Taw is believed to have come from a simple mark; a cross or asterisk-like marking, perhaps indicating a signature.

Hebrew Tav

Hebrew Pronunciation

The letter Tav in modern Hebrew usually represents a voiceless alveolar plosive IPA|/t/).

Variations on Written form/pronunciation

The letter Tav is one of the six letters which can receive a Dagesh Kal. The six are Bet, Gimmel, Daled, Kaph, Pe, and Tav (see Hebrew Alphabet for more about these letters). Three of them (Bet, Kaph, and Pe) have their sound values changed in modern Hebrew from the fricative to the plosive by adding a dagesh. The other three have the same pronunciation in modern Hebrew, but have had alternate pronunciations at other times and places. In traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation, it represented a IPA|/s/ (a form which still is common today, especially among Diaspora Jews) without the dagesh, and had the plosive form when it had the dagesh. In some Sephardi areas, such as Yemen, Tav without a dagesh represented a voiceless dental fricative IPA|/θ/ without a dagesh and the plosive form with the dagesh. See Bet, Daled, Kaph, Pe, and Gimmel.

ignificance of Tav

In gematria Tav represents the number 400, the largest single number that can be represented without using the Sophit forms (see Kaph, Mem, Nun, Pe, and Tzade).

In representing names from foreign languages, a geresh or "chupchik" can also be placed after the tav ('ת), making it represent IPA|/θ/ IPA|/ð/.

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" (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" - death. 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. ["Exodus" 12:7,12.] In Ezekiel’s Old Testament 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 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. [Cf. the New Testament's condemnation of lukewarmness in "Revelation" 3:15-16]

ayings with Taw

From Aleph to Taw describes something from beginning to end; the Hebrew equivalent of the English "From A to Z".

yriac Taw

Like Hebrew and Phoenician, it is the last letter in the alphabet. It represents either a hard t (voiceless alveolar plosive) or a soft θ (voiceless dental fricative).

Arabic tā

The letter is named "tā", and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:

The form "tā marbuta" (ة ,ـة) is used at the end of words to mark feminine gender for nouns and adjectives (which in Arabic are considered to be two types of the same general class of words). Initial tā is used to mark feminine gender in third-person imperfective/present tense verbs. Final ت‎◌ ("kasra", then tā, pronounced /it/) is used to mark feminine gender for third-person perfective/past tense verbs, while final تَ (tā-fattransl|sem|ḥa, /ta/) is used to mark past-tense second-person singular masculine verbs, final تِ (tā-kasra, /ti/) to mark past-tense second-person singular feminine verbs, and final تُ (tā-transl|sem|ḍamma, /tu/) to mark past-tense first-person singular verbs.____________

Endnotes

ee also

*Tav (number)