In a writing system , a letter is a grapheme that generally corresponds to a phoneme —the smallest functional unit of speech—though there is rarely total one-to-one correspondence between the two. An alphabet is a writing system that uses letters.
30-636: 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 / ˈ t iː / ), plural tees . It is derived from the Semitic Taw 𐤕 of the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew script ( Aramaic and Hebrew Taw ת/𐡕/ [REDACTED] , Syriac Taw ܬ, and Arabic ت Tāʼ ) via
60-411: A multigraph . Multigraphs include digraphs of two letters (e.g. English ch , sh , th ), and trigraphs of three letters (e.g. English tch ). The same letterform may be used in different alphabets while representing different phonemic categories. The Latin H , Greek eta ⟨Η⟩ , and Cyrillic en ⟨Н⟩ are homoglyphs , but represent different phonemes. Conversely,
90-509: A lowercase form (also called minuscule ). Upper- and lowercase letters represent the same sound, but serve different functions in writing. Capital letters are most often used at the beginning of a sentence, as the first letter of a proper name or title, or in headers or inscriptions. They may also serve other functions, such as in the German language where all nouns begin with capital letters. The terms uppercase and lowercase originated in
120-539: A variety of modern uses in mathematics, science, and engineering . People and objects are sometimes named after letters, for one of these reasons: The word letter entered Middle English c. 1200 , borrowed from the Old French letre . It eventually displaced the previous Old English term bōcstæf ' bookstaff '. Letter ultimately descends from the Latin littera , which may have been derived from
150-555: A work of simplification and "romanization" of the Cyrillic alphabet by the first Belarusian printer François Skorina (Prague and Vilnius editions) will give a writing of capitals close to modern. This font was further improved thanks to the Belarusian printer Ilya Kopievich, who from 1700 to 1706, by order of Peter I, published about 25 books in Amsterdam and Danzig. The font of his publications
180-529: Is a letter of the Cyrillic script . It commonly represents the dental nasal consonant /n/ , like the pronunciation of ⟨n⟩ in " n eat". And it can be palatized /nʲ/ like in the pair of hard and soft consonnant for the word: жена́ [ʐɨˈ n a] 'wife' and же́нин [ˈʐe nʲ ɪn] 'wife's'. The capital Cyrillic letter En looks the same as the capitals Greek letter Eta (Η η) and Latin letter H . As with most Cyrillic letters,
210-456: Is considered to be a separate letter from ⟨n⟩ , though this distinction is not usually recognised in English dictionaries. In computer systems, each has its own code point , U+006E n LATIN SMALL LETTER N and U+00F1 ñ LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH TILDE , respectively. Letters may also function as numerals with assigned numerical values, for example with Roman numerals . Greek and Latin letters have
240-424: Is indicated by the existence of precomposed characters for use with computer systems (for example, ⟨á⟩ , ⟨à⟩ , ⟨ä⟩ , ⟨â⟩ , ⟨ã⟩ .) In the following table, letters from multiple different writing systems are shown, to demonstrate the variety of letters used throughout the world. En (Cyrillic) En (Н н; italics: Н н )
270-458: 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. 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
300-626: The International Phonetic Alphabet , ⟨ t ⟩ denotes the voiceless alveolar plosive . [REDACTED] Letter (alphabet) A letter is a type of grapheme , the smallest functional unit within a writing system. Letters are graphemes that broadly correspond to phonemes , the smallest functional units of sound in speech. Similarly to how phonemes are combined to form spoken words, letters may be combined to form written words. A single phoneme may also be represented by multiple letters in sequence, collectively called
330-641: The Greek diphthera 'writing tablet' via Etruscan . Until the 19th century, letter was also used interchangeably to refer to a speech segment . Before alphabets, phonograms , graphic symbols of sounds, were used. There were three kinds of phonograms: verbal, pictures for entire words, syllabic, which stood for articulations of words, and alphabetic, which represented signs or letters. The earliest examples of which are from Ancient Egypt and Ancient China, dating to c. 3000 BCE . The first consonantal alphabet emerged around c. 1800 BCE , representing
SECTION 10
#1732848441696360-518: 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. Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets . The sound value of Semitic Taw ,
390-543: The H-shape for the letter Н (in use at that time, see Karion Istomin's alphabet book from 1694) at the detriment of the original N-shape. No specific explanation is available for this choice and if there was a problem with readability, it could have been decided to return to the original shape as in the Greek or Latin alphabet. We can only note that the Church prefers to continue using the old shape, thus refusing to reverse two ghlyphs in
420-706: The Phoenicians, Semitic workers in Egypt. Their script was originally written and read from right to left. From the Phoenician alphabet came the Etruscan and Greek alphabets. From there, the most widely used alphabet today emerged, Latin, which is written and read from left to right. The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters, nineteen of which the Latin alphabet used, and the Greek alphabet, adapted c. 900 BCE , added four letters to those used in Phoenician. This Greek alphabet
450-487: 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
480-533: The book ШИЦГАЛ А.Г., РУССКИЙ ТИПОГРАФСКИЙ ШРИФТ, page 24), or in a book printed by order of the Tsar in 1706 (see Font of I.Kopievich in the Russian version of the article Civil script [ ru ] ). In the Cyrillic letter Н with the Greek shape N, the descending diagonal "\" will progressively become shorter: See for example: One of the explanations may be the management of the virtual line horizontally dividing
510-428: The centuries have led to the adoption of the current form of Greek letter Eta (H), a shape that has been formerly used as a model for the letter И . The believing that "the reason En has a horizontal bar, like H, instead of a diagonal line, is to avoid confusion with the letter И" has no groundings: It seems more probable that the change of shapes in Cyrillic resulted from a cascade of consequences, apparently around
540-438: The days of handset type for printing presses. Individual letter blocks were kept in specific compartments of drawers in a type case. Capital letters were stored in a higher drawer or upper case. In most alphabetic scripts, diacritics (or accents) are a routinely used. English is unusual in not using them except for loanwords from other languages or personal names (for example, naïve , Brontë ). The ubiquity of this usage
570-622: The distinct forms of ⟨S⟩ , the Greek sigma ⟨Σ⟩ , and Cyrillic es ⟨С⟩ each represent analogous /s/ phonemes. Letters are associated with specific names, which may differ between languages and dialects. Z , for example, is usually called zed outside of the United States, where it is named zee . Both ultimately derive from the name of the parent Greek letter zeta ⟨Ζ⟩ . In alphabets, letters are arranged in alphabetical order , which also may vary by language. In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩
600-571: The late 7th and early 8th centuries. Finally, many slight letter additions and drops were made to the common alphabet used in the western world. Minor changes were made such as the removal of certain letters, such as thorn ⟨Þ þ⟩ , wynn ⟨Ƿ ƿ⟩ , and eth ⟨Ð ð⟩ . A letter can have multiple variants, or allographs , related to variation in style of handwriting or printing . Some writing systems have two major types of allographs for each letter: an uppercase form (also called capital or majuscule ) and
630-543: The letter И , and maybe also letter І and the letter П (see these letters for details of their history). From c. 893 in Bulgaria, the Early Cyrillic alphabet was made of uncial Greek letters and glagolitic letters. This Cyrillic uncial , called " Ustav (script) [ ru ] " in Russian, is a style developed on the model of the Greek uncial . The name of En was нашь ( našĭ ), meaning "ours". The letter
SECTION 20
#1732848441696660-410: The letters as А,Б,В,Є,Ж,З,Н,К,Х,Ч,Э,Ю. And this was also applied to the glyph N for some unknown reason (maybe a need for simplification, or to create a styling effect). For example, the scribe draws the horizontal in the glyph H higher than the middle, then the other similar letters will be drawn with a virtual line higher. Therefore, in the glyph N, the scribe must shorten the diagonal and make it end at
690-406: The level of the virtual line. Then, other scribes repeat the same modifications but sometimes without respecting the same virtual line for all the letters, thus making the root cause disappear. In uncial Greek, the shape of the letter H sometimes sees the horizontal line rise upwards, and the shape of the letter N either does not change, or moves accordingly, and sometimes we can see both versions in
720-405: The lowercase form is simply a smaller version of the uppercase. However, in modern Church Slavonic publications, the old N-shaped form is still often used. It should not be confused with the letter И (similar to a mirrored shape of the Latin letter N ): In the Early Cyrillic alphabet, the letter was created according to the model of the Greek letter Nu . The modifications of the glyph N over
750-557: The same text (see Lectionary 5 and Lectionary 183 ). From the 15th century, the poluustav [ ru ] ( en in Russian) a semi-uncial style developed, and is notably still used today by the Church Slavonic publishing. This style turns into a more fluid writing: there is a slope, letters descending below the line, capital letters, transitional cursive. In parallel, the first printing fonts are being developed. In 1517,
780-428: 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 . In the orthographies of other languages, ⟨t⟩ is often used for /t/ , the voiceless dental plosive /t̪/ , or similar sounds. In
810-477: The two letters Н and И (shapes N and H), the vertical columns are drawn wide and the line between is thin. These shapes are mainly used up to the 13th century, and since the 19th century, in academic publishing to reproduce old Slavonic texts (when ustav-style Cyrillic fonts are used). See for example: The letter И like an H can still be seen in a book "Arithmetic" from Leonty Magnitsky published in Moscow in 1703 (see
840-502: Was created according to the model of the Greek letter Nu (Ν ν) as they share the same sound /n/. Therefore, the letter had a descending diagonal "\" between the two vertical lines. At the same time, the letter И was created according to the model of the Greek letter Eta (Η η) for the same reason (sound /i/). Therefore, the letter had a horizontal line "-" between the two vertical lines. In Cyrillic uncial style (as in Greek), for
870-408: Was extremely close to the civil font adopted by the Russian emperor and printed by Pierre Mogiloy in 1708. In the Cyrillic И with the Greek shape H, the horizontal line "-" has become an ascending diagonal: See for examples: Therefore, the H-shape for the letter И became less frequent and eventually became available for another letter as... Н. Then the official Civil Script made it mandatory to use
900-504: Was the first to assign letters not only to consonant sounds, but also to vowels . The Roman Empire further developed and refined the Latin alphabet, beginning around 500 BCE. During the fifth and sixth centuries, the development of lowercase letters began to emerge in Roman writing. At this point, paragraphs, uppercase and lowercase letters, and the concept of sentences and clauses still had not emerged; these final bits of development emerged in
#695304