Bet (letter)

Bet or Beth is the second letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Syriac and Arabic alphabet . Its value is a voiced bilabial plosive, IPA .

This letter's name means "house" in various Semitic languages (Hebrew: bayit, Arabic: bayt), and appears to derive from a Middle Bronze Age picture of a house by acrophony.

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Beta, Latin B, and Cyrillic Б, В.

Arabic bā

The letter is named bā, and is written is several way depending in its position in the word:

Hebrew Bet

This letter is named bet, following the modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, bet (), in Israel and by most Jews familiar with Hebrew, although many Ashkenazi speakers pronounce it beis (), and some Jews pronounce it beth (). It is also named beth, following the Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, in academic circles.

Variations on written form/pronunciation:

There are two orthographic variants of this letter, which alter the pronunciation:

בּ bet /b/

and

ב vet [b (among Egyptian Jews), likely used to be

Bet with the dagesh

When the Bet has a "dot" in its center, known as a dagesh, then it is pronounced as ^*. There are various rules in Hebrew grammar that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.

Bet 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 ^*.

Significance of Bet, Mystical and otherwise:

Bet in gematria symbolizes the number 2.

As a 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 numbers that stand for the power of infinite sets.

Phoenician alphabet | Arabic letters