Ṯāʾ

The isolated form of the letter.

Ṯāʼ (ﺙ) is one of the six letters the Arabic alphabet added to the twenty-two inherited from the Phoenician alphabet (the others being ḫāʼ, ḏāl, ḍād, ẓāʼ, ġayn). It represents the voiceless dental fricative (IPA: [θ]), also found in English as the "th" in words such as "think" and "thin". In name and shape, it is a variant of tāʼ. It is usually pronounced "tha" when alone. Its numerical value is 500 (see Abjad numerals).

Common Semitic perspective

The choice of the letter Tāʼ as the base for this letter was not due to etymology (see History of the Arabic alphabet), but rather due to phonetic similarity. For other Semitic cognates of the phoneme /ṯ/ see Proto-Semitic language#Sound changes between Proto-Semitic and the daughter languages.

The South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for /ṯ/.

See also

• Arabic phonology

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