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Taw,tav, ortaf is the twenty-second and lastletter of theSemitic abjads, includingArabictāʾت‎,Aramaictaw 𐡕‎,Hebrewtavת‎,Phoeniciantāw 𐤕, andSyriactaw ܬ. In Arabic, it also gives rise to the derived letterثṯāʾ. Its original sound value is/t/. It is related to theAncient North Arabian 𐪉‎‎‎,South Arabian𐩩, andGe'ezተ.

The Phoenician letter gave rise to theGreektau (Τ),LatinT, andCyrillicТ.

Taw is believed to be derived from theEgyptian hieroglyph representing atally mark.^{[citation needed]}

Hieroglyph	Proto-Sinaitic	Phoenician	Paleo-Hebrew

The letter is namedtāʼ. It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word:

Finalـَتْ (fatha, thentāʼ with asukun on it,pronounced/at/, though diacritics are normally omitted) is used to mark feminine gender for third-personperfective/past tense verbs, while finalتَ (tāʼ-fatḥa,/ta/) is used to mark past-tense second-person singular masculine verbs, finalتِ (tāʼ-kasra,/ti/) to mark past-tense second-person singular feminine verbs, and finalتُ (tāʼ-ḍamma,/tu/) to mark past-tense first-person singular verbs. The plural form of Arabic letterت istāʼāt (تاءات), apalindrome.

Recently, the isolatedت has been used online as anemoticon in the Western world, because it resembles a smiling face.^[1]

An alternative form (ـَة, ة) calledtāʼ marbūṭa (تَاءْ مَرْبُوطَة), "boundtāʼ ", is used at the end of words to markfeminine gender fornouns andadjectives. Regulartāʼ, to distinguish it fromtāʼ marbūṭa, is referred to astāʼ maftūḥa (تَاءْ مَفْتُوحَة, "opentāʼ").

In words such asرِسَالَة ('letter, message, epistle'), thefatha (/a/) +tāʼ marbūṭa combination (ـَة) istransliterated as-a or-ah (risāla orrisālah), and pronounced as/-a/ (as if there were only afatha). Historically,tāʼ marbūṭa was pronounced as the/t/ sound in all positions, but now the/t/ sound is dropped in coda positions.

However, when a word ending with atāʼ marbūṭa is suffixed with agrammatical case ending or any other suffix, the/t/ is clearly pronounced. For example, the wordرِسَالَة ('letter, message', 'epistle') is pronounced asrisāla inpausa but is pronouncedrisālatun in the nominative case (/un/ being the nominative case ending),risālatin in the genitive case (/in/ being the genitive case ending), andrisālatan in the accusative case (/an/ being the accusative case ending). When the possessive suffix-ī ('my') is added, it becomesrisālatī ('my letter') . The /t/ is also always pronounced when the word is inconstruct state (iḍāfa), for example inRisālat al-Ghufrān ('The Epistle of Forgiveness').

The isolated and final forms of this letter combine the shape ofhāʼ (ه) and the two dots oftāʼ (ت). When words containing the symbol are borrowed into other languages written in theArabic script, such asPersian,tāʼ marbūṭa usually becomes either a regularه or a regularت.

Orthographic variants
Various print fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
ת	ת	ת

Hebrew spelling:תָּיו, תָּי״ו‎

The lettertav inModern Hebrew usually represents avoiceless alveolar plosive:/t/.

The lettertav is one of the six letters that can receive adagesh kal diacritic; the others arebet,gimel,dalet,kaph andpe. Bet, kaph and pe have their sound values changed in modern Hebrew from the fricative to the plosive, by adding a dagesh. In modern Hebrew, the other three do not change their pronunciation with or without a dagesh, but they have had alternate pronunciations at other times and places.

In traditionalAshkenazi pronunciation, tav represents an/s/ without thedagesh and has the plosive form when it has the dagesh. AmongYemen and someSephardi areas, tav without a dagesh represented avoiceless dental fricative/θ/—a pronunciation hailed by theSfath Emeth work as wholly authentic, while the tav with the dagesh is the plosive/t/. In traditionalItalian pronunciation, tav without a dagesh is sometimes/d/.^{[clarification needed]}

Tav with ageresh (ת׳‎) is sometimes used in order to represent the TH digraph in loanwords.

Ingematria, tav represents the number 400, the largest single number that can be represented without using thesophit (final) forms (seekaph,mem,nun,pe, andtzade).

In representing names from foreign languages, ageresh can also be placed after the tav (ת׳), making it represent/θ/. (See also:Hebraization of English)

Tav is the last letter of the Hebrew wordemet, which means 'truth'. Themidrash explains thatemet is made up of the first, middle, and last letters of theHebrew alphabet (aleph,mem, and tav:אמת).Sheqer (שקר, 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. InJewish mythology it was the wordemet that was carved into the head of theGolem which ultimately gave it life. But when the letteraleph was erased from the golem's forehead, what was left was "met"—dead. And so the golem died.

Ezekiel 9:4 depicts a vision in which thetav plays aPassover role similar to the blood on the lintel and doorposts of a Hebrew home in Egypt.^[2] In Ezekiel's 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-marked 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 ofshibboleth for loyalty and zeal for God.^[3]

״מאל״ף עד תי״ו״, "From aleph to taf" describes something from beginning to end, the Hebrew equivalent of the English "From A to Z."

In theSyriac alphabet, as in the Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets,taw (ܬܰܐܘ‎) ortăw (ܬܲܘ‎orܬܰܘ‎) is the final letter in the alphabet, most commonly representing thevoicelessdentalstop[t̪] andfricative[θ] consonant pair, differentiated phonemically byhard and soft markings. When left as unmarkedܬ‎ܬ‎ܬ‎ or marked with aqūššāyā dot above the letterܬ݁‎ܬ݁‎ܬ݁‎ indicating 'hard' pronunciation, it is realized as aplosive/t/. When thephoneme is marked with arūkkāḵā dot below the letterܬ݂‎ܬ݂‎ܬ݂‎ indicating 'soft' pronunciation, thephone isspirantized to africative/θ/. Hard taw (taw qšīṯā) isRomanized as a plaint, while the soft form of the letter (taw rakkīḵtā) is transliterated asṯ orth.

ʾEsṭrangēlā (classical)	Maḏnḥāyā (eastern)	Serṭo (western)	Unicode character
			ܬ‎ ܬ‎ ܬ‎

• Tav (number)

Wikimedia Commons has media related toTaw (letter).

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