Tsade

Tsade (also spelled Tzadi or Sadhe) is the eighteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . Its oldest value is probably IPA , although there is a variety of pronunciation in different modern Semitic languages and their dialects. It represents the coalescence of three Proto-Semitic "emphatic consonants" in Canaanite. Arabic, which kept the phonemes separate, introduced variants of and to express the three. (See ḍād, ẓāʼ.) In Aramaic, these emphatic consonants coalesced instead with ʻayin and ṭēt, respectively, thus Hebrew ereẓ ארץ (earth) is arʻāʼ ארעא in Aramaic.

The Phoenician letter is continued in the Greek Sampi Ϡ and San Ϻ and in Etruscan Ś. It may have inspired the form of the letter Tse in the Glagolitic alphabet.

Hebrew speakers may also call this letter Tsadik (meaning "righteous person"), assimilating the 'k' sound from the following letter in the alphabet, Qoph.

Origins

The origin of Tzade is unclear. It may have come from a Middle Bronze Age glyph based on a pictogram of a plant, perhaps a papyrus plant, or a fish hook (in Modern Hebrew, "tsayad" means "hunt", and Arabic "sad" means "to fish" or "to hunt").

Hebrew Tsade

Name

Other spellings of the name include , şādhê, çādhê, s`àdhê, tzadi, tzadik, tsodi, and tsodik. See Hebrew alphabet for a more detailed list of its various transliterations and pronunciations.

Pronunciation

In modern Hebrew, tzade is pronounced as a voiceless alveolar affricate (IPA: /ʦ/), as this is the letter’s pronunciation in the Yiddish language. It was likely pronounced as a pharyngealized /s/ historically; Yemenite Jews still pronounce it this way.

Variations

Tzade, like Kaph, Mem, Pe, and Nun, has a final form, used at the end of words. Its shape changes from this: צ to this: ץ. The pronunciation is not changed.

Significance

In gematria, Tzade represents the number 90. Its final form represents 900 but this is rarely used, Tav, Tav, and Qoph (400+400+100) being used instead.

A geresh can also be placed after it (צ׳), giving it the IPA sound /ʧ/. This is most commonly seen in the Hebrew צ׳יפּסים, meaning chips. Scholars also use this rendering of the letter to unambiguously represent the Arabic and proto-Semitic ḍād.

As an abbreviation, it stands for tzaphon, North.

Tzade is also one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah. See Shin, Ayin, Teth, Nun, Zayin, and Gimmel.