Bet, Beth, Beh, or Vet is the second

letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...

of the

Semitic abjads An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowel ...

, including Phoenician Bēt Phoenician_beth

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

Bēt ,

Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...

Bēth

Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...

Bēṯ , and

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

. Its sound value is the

voiced bilabial stop The voiced bilabial plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is b. The voiced bilabial stop oc ...

⟨b⟩ or the

voiced labiodental fricative The voiced labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is v. The sound is similar to vo ...

⟨v⟩. The letter's name means "house" in various Semitic languages (Arabic '' bayt'', Akkadian '' bītu, bētu'', Hebrew: '' bayiṯ'', Phoenician '' bt'' etc.; ultimately all from

Proto-Semitic Proto-Semitic is the hypothetical reconstructed proto-language ancestral to the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the Proto-Semitic '' Urheimat''; scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant ( ...

'' *bayt-''), and appears to derive from an

Egyptian hieroglyph Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

of a house by acrophony. O1 The Phoenician letter gave rise to, among others, the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

beta ( Β, β),

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

B (B, b) and

Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...

Be ( Б, б) and Ve ( В, в).

Origin

The name ''bet'' is derived from the West Semitic word for "

house A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air condi ...

" (as in Hebrew ''bayt'' בַּיִת), and the shape of the letter derives from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph that may have been based on the

'' Pr'' O1 which depicts a house.

Arabic

The Arabic letter is named ' (). It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word: The letter normally renders sound, except in some names and

loanword A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...

s where it can also render , often Arabized as , as in ( Persil). For , it may be used interchangeably with the Persian letter - ''pe'' (with 3 dots) in this case.

Hebrew Bet / Vet

Hebrew spelling: The Hebrew letter represents two different phonemes: a "b" sound () (bet) and a "v" sound () (vet). When Hebrew is written '' Ktiv menuqad'' (with ''niqqud diacritics'') the two are distinguished by a dot (called a

dagesh The dagesh () is a diacritic used in the Hebrew alphabet. It was added to the Hebrew orthography at the same time as the Masoretic system of niqqud (vowel points). It takes the form of a dot placed inside a Hebrew letter and has the effect of modi ...

) in the centre of the letter for and no dot for . In modern Hebrew, the more commonly used ''

Ktiv hasar niqqud ''Ktiv hasar niqqud'' (; he, כתיב חסר ניקוד, literally "spelling lacking niqqud"), colloquially known as ''ktiv maleh'' (; , literally "full spelling"), are the rules for writing Hebrew without vowel points (niqqud), often replacin ...

'' spelling, which does not use diacritics, does not visually distinguish between the two phonemes. This letter is named ''bet'' and ''vet'', following the modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, ''bet'' and ''vet'' (), in

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

and by most

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

familiar with Hebrew, although some non-Israeli

Ashkenazi Ashkenazi Jews ( ; he, יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, translit=Yehudei Ashkenaz, ; yi, אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ''Ashkenazim'',, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: , singu ...

speakers pronounce it ''beis'' (or ''bais'') and ''veis'' () (or ''vais'' or ''vaiz''). It is also named ''beth'', following the

Tiberian Hebrew Tiberian Hebrew is the canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) committed to writing by Masoretic scholars living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Galilee under the Abbasid Caliphate. They wrote in the form of Tiberian ...

pronunciation, in academic circles. In modern Hebrew the frequency of the usage of bet, out of all the letters, is 4.98%.

Variations on written form/pronunciation

Bet with the dagesh

When the Bet appears as with a "dot" in its center, known as a

, then it represents . There are various rules in

Hebrew grammar Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved th ...

that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.

Bet without the dagesh (Vet)

In ''Ktiv menuqad'' spelling, which uses diacritics, when the letter appears as ''without'' the

("dot") in its center it represents a

: . In ''Ktiv hasar niqqud'' spelling, without diacritics, the letter without the dot may represent either phoneme.

Mystical significance of

Bet in

gematria Gematria (; he, גמטריא or gimatria , plural or , ''gimatriot'') is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase according to an alphanumerical cipher. A single word can yield several values depending on the cipher ...

represents the number 2. As a

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...

, the letter bet may function as a

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

meaning "in", "at", or "with". Bet is the first letter of the

Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...

. As Bet is the number 2 in gematria, this is said to symbolize that there are two parts to Torah: the Written

and the

Oral Torah According to Rabbinic Judaism, the Oral Torah or Oral Law ( he, , Tōrā šebbəʿal-pe}) are those purported laws, statutes, and legal interpretations that were not recorded in the Five Books of Moses, the Written Torah ( he, , Tōrā šebbīḵ� ...

. According to Jewish legend, the letter Bet was specially chosen among the 22 letters in Hebrew by

God In monotheism, monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator deity, creator, and principal object of Faith#Religious views, faith.Richard Swinburne, Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Ted Honderich, Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Ox ...

as the first letter of Torah as it begins with "''Bereshit'' (In the beginning) God created heaven and earth."

Genesis Rabbah Genesis Rabbah (Hebrew: , ''B'reshith Rabba'') is a religious text from Judaism's classical period, probably written between 300 and 500 CE with some later additions. It is a midrash comprising a collection of ancient rabbinical homiletical inter ...

points out that the letter is closed on three sides and open on one; this is indicate that one can investigate what happened after creation, but not what happened before it, or what is above the heavens or below the earth.Genesis Rabbah 1:10
/ref>

In mathematics

set theory Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies sets, which can be informally described as collections of objects. Although objects of any kind can be collected into a set, set theory, as a branch of mathematics, is mostly conce ...

, the

beth number In mathematics, particularly in set theory, the beth numbers are a certain sequence of infinite cardinal numbers (also known as transfinite numbers), conventionally written \beth_0,\ \beth_1,\ \beth_2,\ \beth_3,\ \dots, where \beth is the second H ...

s stand for powers of infinite sets.

Syriac Beth

In the

Syriac alphabet The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century AD. It is one of the Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares similarities with ...

, the second letter is — Beth (). It is one of six letters that represents two associated sounds (the others are

Gimel Gimel is the third letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Gīml , Hebrew Gimel , Aramaic Gāmal , Syriac Gāmal , and Arabic (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order). Its sound value in the original Phoenician and in all d ...

Dalet Dalet (, also spelled Daleth or Daled) is the fourth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Dālet 𐤃, Hebrew Dālet , Aramaic Dālath , Syriac Dālaṯ , and Arabic (in abjadi order; 8th in modern order). Its sound value ...

Kaph Kaph (also spelled kaf) is the eleventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician kāp , Hebrew kāf , Aramaic kāp , Syriac kāp̄ , and Arabic kāf (in abjadi order). The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek kappa (Κ), Lati ...

, Pe and Taw). When Beth has a hard pronunciation (''qûššāyâ'') it is a b.html"_;"title="voiced_bilabial_plosive.html"_;"title="/nowiki>voiced_bilabial_plosive">b">voiced_bilabial_plosive.html"_;"title="/nowiki>voiced_bilabial_plosive">b_When_Beth_has_a_soft_pronunciation_(''rûkkāḵâ'')_it_is_traditionally_pronounced_as_a_[voiced_bilabial_fricative.html" ;"title="voiced_bilabial_plosive">b.html" ;"title="voiced_bilabial_plosive.html" ;"title="/nowiki>voiced bilabial plosive">b">voiced_bilabial_plosive.html" ;"title="/nowiki>voiced bilabial plosive">b When Beth has a soft pronunciation (''rûkkāḵâ'') it is traditionally pronounced as a [voiced bilabial fricative">v], similar to its Hebrew form. However, in eastern dialects, the soft Beth is more often pronounced as a [voiced labial-velar approximant, w], and can form diphthongs with its preceding vowel. Whether Beth should be pronounced as a hard or soft sound is generally determined by its context within a word. However, wherever it is traditionally

geminate In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from ...

within a word, even in dialects that no longer distinguish double consonants, it is hard. In the West Syriac dialect, some speakers always pronounce Beth with its hard sound. Beth, when attached to the beginning of a word, represents the

'in, with, at'. As a numeral, the letter represents the number 2, and, using various systems of dashes above or below, can stand for 2,000 and 20,000.

Character encodings

References

External links

{{Authority control Phoenician alphabet Arabic letters Hebrew letters