U05EA

U+05EA, commonly known as the Hebrew letter Tav, is the twenty-second and final letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It is part of the Hebrew script and is encoded in the Unicode Hebrew block. The letter represents the voiceless alveolar plosive /t/ and is used in Modern Hebrew as the standard sound for the letter t.

In gematria, Tav has the numerical value 400. The name Tav (often transliterated Taw in older sources) reflects its historical origin and is used in linguistic, liturgical, and scholarly contexts. The letter is written the same shape in all positions, with no distinct final form as some other Hebrew letters have.

Typography and phonology notes: Tav can appear with or without a dagesh, a diacritic that can affect consonant emphasis in some letters, but in modern usage it functions as the regular /t/ sound. Unlike letters such as Kaf, Mem, Nun, Pe, or Tsadi, Tav does not have a special final form for word endings.

Origin and usage: Tav descends from the Phoenician letter taw, and its name and shape have influenced other scripts over time. It remains a common component of Hebrew and Yiddish orthographies and appears in religious, secular, and digital texts.

Encoding and representation: In Unicode, Tav is assigned to U+05EA. In text, it can be represented with the HTML entity reference ת or the decimal reference ת.