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Beth (letter)
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{{Phoenician glyph|letname=Bēth|archar=�|sychar=ܒ|gechar=በ|hechar=ב|amchar=beth|phchar=beth|ipa=b|num=2|gem=2}}
{{Arabic alphabet}}
{{Hebrew alphabet}}
{{Syriac alphabet}}
'''Beth''' or '''Bet''' is the second
letter of many
Semitic abjads, including
Phoenician language Phoenician,
Aramaic language Aramaic,
Hebrew language Hebrew {{Ivrit|ב}}
Syriac alphabet Syriac {{Unicode|Ü’}} and
Arabic alphabet {{ArabDIN.html">voiced bilabial plosive,
IPA.html">International_Phonetic_Alphabet|IPA {{IPA|[b]}}.
This letter's name means "house" in various Semitic languages (Hebrew: ''bayit'', Arabic: ''bayt''), and appears to derive from a
Middle Bronze Age alphabets Middle Bronze Age picture of a house by
acrophony.
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the
Greek alphabet Greek Beta (letter) Beta,
Latin alphabet Latin B, and
Cyrillic alphabet Cyrillic Б,
Ð’.
Hebrew Beth
This letter is named ''beth'', following the
Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, in academic circles, and ''bet'', following the modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, ''bet'' ({{IPA.html">Israel and by most
Jews familiar with Hebrew, although many
Ashkenazi.html">Ashkenazi Hebrew|Ashkenazi speakers pronounce it ''beis'' ({{IPA|/beʲs/}}), and some Jews pronounce it ''beth'' ({{IPA|/beθ/}}).
Variations on written form/pronunciation:
{{main|Hebrew phonology}}
There are two orthographic variants of this letter, which alter the pronunciation:
*'''בּ''' bet /b/
and
*'''ב ''' vet [v], [b] (among Egyptian Jews), likely used to be
Voiced bilabial fricative {{IPA|β}}
=Beth with the dagesh
=
When the Beth has a "dot" in its center, known as a
dagesh, then it is pronounced as [b]. There are various rules in
Hebrew grammar that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.
=Beth without the dagesh (Veth)
=
When this letter appears as '''ב''' ''without'' the
dagesh ("dot") in its center then it is pronounced as a
voiced labiodental fricative [v].
Significance of Bet, Mystical and otherwise:
Bet in
gematria symbolizes the number 2.
As a
Prefix#Linguistics prefix, the letter bet may function as a
preposition meaning "in", "at", or "with".
Bet is the first letter of the
Torah. As Bet is the number 2 in gematria, this is said to symbolize that there are two parts to Torah: the Written
Torah and the
Oral Torah.
Rashi points out that the letter is closed on three sides and open on one; this is to teach you that you may question about what happened after creation, but not what happened before it, or what is above the heavens or below the earth.
In
discrete mathematics, beth represents the
beth number beth numbers that stand for the power of infinite sets.
Category:Phoenician alphabet
Category:Arabic letters
als:ב
am:ቤት
ar:ب
ca:ב
de:Beth
es:Beth (letra)
fr:Beth (lettre)
he:ב
nl:Bet
ja:ب
nn:ב
fi:Bet
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