Teth ܛ

Teth is the ninth letter of the Syriac abjad, with the numeral value nine. It writes an emphatic t, one of the consonants that Semitic languages set apart from their plain counterparts by a secondary articulation further back in the mouth. In the classical reading the contrast between teth and taw is a real one, and the two letters are not interchangeable in spelling.

Teth joins on both sides and takes initial, medial, final and isolated shapes. Its name is the inherited Northwest Semitic word usually glossed as a serpent, a reconstruction of a sign in the older linear alphabet rather than a description of the Syriac form.

A marked variant of teth belongs to Garshuni, the writing of Arabic in Syriac letters, where it stands for an Arabic sound the alphabet has no letter for. Like the marked Garshuni gamal, it is a convention of that use and not a twenty-third letter of the Syriac alphabet. The abjad remains twenty-two letters however many marked signs a manuscript happens to carry.

Estrangela, Serto and Madnhaya each draw teth in their own way, and this entry is for the letter that all three write. Where a claim holds for only one hand, the atlas says which.

Teth carries the numeral value nine and is therefore the last of the units, so a scribe writing a figure in Syriac letters passes from teth to yudh exactly where the count passes from nine to ten. Nothing about the letter marks that boundary; it falls there because the inherited order puts it there.

Semitic languages characteristically pair a plain consonant with an emphatic one, articulated further back in the mouth, and treat the two as separate sounds that separate words. Syriac inherits three such letters: teth beside taw, sadhe beside semkath, and qaph beside kaph. The distinctions were live when the alphabet was fixed and they are part of why the sequence has the shape it has.

Teth is the emphatic t. What exactly emphasis consisted of in the older languages is described differently in different accounts, since the evidence is spellings and later reading traditions rather than recordings, and the modern languages that keep the contrast do not all keep it the same way. In the classical reading of Syriac the letters are held apart, and spelling maintains the distinction regardless of how any particular community pronounces it.

The consequence for a reader is simple and practical. Two Syriac roots may differ only in whether they carry teth or taw, and nothing but the letter tells them apart. Unlike the dalath and rish pair, which share a shape, teth and taw look nothing alike, so this distinction survives even a badly written manuscript.

The emphatic letters also carry their own numeral values, teth nine and taw four hundred, and there the pairing does nothing at all. The numbering follows the order of the alphabet and takes no notice of which letters are related to which.