Taw

Taw, tav, or taf is the twenty-second and last letter of the Semitic abjads, including Arabic tāʾ ت, Aramaic taw 𐡕‎, Hebrew tav ת, Phoenician tāw 𐤕, and Syriac taw ܬ. In Arabic, it also gives rise to the derived letter ث ṯāʾ. Taw's original sound value has been claimed to be /t/. It is related to the Ancient North Arabian 𐪉‎‎‎, South Arabian 𐩩, and Geʽez ተ.

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

Origins

Taw is believed to be derived from the Egyptian hieroglyph representing a tally mark.

Arabic tāʾ

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

Final ـَتْ (fatha, then tāʼ with a sukun on it, pronounced /at/, though diacritics are normally omitted) is used to mark feminine gender for third-person perfective/past tense verbs, while final تَ (tāʼ-fatḥa, /ta/) is used to mark past-tense second-person singular masculine verbs, final تِ (tāʼ-kasra, /ti/) to mark past-tense second-person singular feminine verbs, and final تُ (tāʼ-ḍamma, /tu/) to mark past-tense first-person singular verbs. The plural form of Arabic letter ت is tāʼāt (تاءات), a palindrome.

Recently, the isolated ت has been used online as an emoticon in the Western world, because it resembles a smiling face.

Tā' marbūṭa

An alternative form (ـَة, ة) called tāʼ marbūṭa (تَاءْ مَرْبُوطَة), "bound tāʼ ", is used at the end of words to mark feminine gender for nouns and adjectives.