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 or none in the case of a silent letter; any of the symbols of an alphabet * Letterform, the g ...

of the

Semitic abjads An abjad ( or abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introd ...

, including Phoenician ''bēt'' 𐤁 ,

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

''bēt'' ,

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

''bēṯ'' 𐡁, Syriac ''bēṯ'' ܒ and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

''bāʾ'' . It is also related to the

Ancient North Arabian Languages and scripts in the 1st Century Arabia Ancient North Arabian (ANA) is a collection of scripts and a language or family of languages under the North Arabian languages branch along with Old Arabic that were used in north and central Ara ...

𐪈‎, South Arabian , and Ge'ez . 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 v ...

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

Proto-Semitic Proto-Semitic is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Semitic languages. There is no consensus regarding the location of the linguistic homeland for Proto-Semitic: scholars hypothesize that it may have originated in the Levant, the Sahara, ...

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

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

of a house by

acrophony Acrophony (; + 'sound') is the naming of letters of an alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself. For example, Greek letter names are acrophonic: the names of the letters α, β, γ, δ, are spelled with t ...

. O1 The Phoenician letter gave rise to, among others, the

Greek Greek may refer to: 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 of all kno ...

beta ( Β, β),

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

B (B, b) and

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

Be ( Б, б) and Ve ( В, в), and also the Armenian letter

Ben Ben is frequently used as a shortened version of the given names Benjamin, Benedict, Bennett, Benson or Ebenezer, and is also a given name in its own right. Ben meaning "son of" is also found in Arabic as ''Ben'' (dialectal Arabic) or ''bin ...

(Բ, բ).

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 c ...

" (as in ), 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 bāʾ

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 a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

s where it can also render , often Arabized as , as in (

Persil Persil (, ) is a German brand of laundry detergent manufactured and marketed by Henkel around the world except in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Latin America (except Mexico), China, Australia and New Zealand, where it is manufactured an ...

). For , it may be used interchangeably with the Persian letter - ''pe'' (with 3 dots) in this case.

Interpretation of

Bāʾ is the first letter of the

Quran The Quran, also Romanization, romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a Waḥy, revelation directly from God in Islam, God (''Allah, Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which ...

, the first letter of

Basmala The (; also known by its opening words ; , "In the name of God in Islam, God") is the titular name of the Islamic phrase “In the name of God in Islam, God, Rahman (name), the Most Gracious, Rahim, the Most Merciful” (, ). It is one of ...

. The letter bāʾ as a

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed. Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...

may function as a

preposition Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...

meaning "by" or "with". Some

tafsir Tafsir ( ; ) refers to an exegesis, or commentary, of the Quran. An author of a ''tafsir'' is a ' (; plural: ). A Quranic ''tafsir'' attempts to provide elucidation, explanation, interpretation, context or commentary for clear understanding ...

s interpreted the positioning of bāʾ as the opener of the Qur'an with ''"by My (

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

's) cause'' ''(all is present and happen)"''.

Variant

A variant letter of ''bāʾ'' named '' pe'' is used in Persian with three dots below instead of just one dot below. However, it is not included on one of the 28 letters on the Arabic alphabet. It is thus written as:

Hebrew bet

Hebrew spelling: The Hebrew letter represents two different phonemes: a "b" sound () (bet) and a "v" sound () (vet). When Hebrew is written ''

Ktiv menuqad Ktiv menuqad ( , literally "writing with niqqud") is text in Hebrew supplemented with niqqud diacritics. In modern Israeli orthography niqqud is rarely used, except in specialised texts such as dictionaries, poetry, or texts for children or for new ...

'' (with ''niqqud diacritics'') the two are distinguished by a dot (called a

dagesh The dagesh () is a diacritic that is used in the Hebrew alphabet. It takes the form of a dot placed inside a consonant. A dagesh can either indicate a "hard" plosive version of the consonant (known as , literally 'light dot') or that the conson ...

) in the centre of the letter for and no dot for . In modern Hebrew, the more commonly used '' Ktiv hasar niqqud'' 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, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

and by most

Jews Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

familiar with Hebrew, although some non-Israeli

Ashkenazi Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...

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 Tib ...

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 (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language until ...

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.

Significance as prefix

As a

, i.e. when attached to the beginning of a word, the letter bet may function as a

meaning "in", "at", or "with".

Numerological and mystical significance

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. Bet in

gematria In numerology, gematria (; or , plural or ) is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word, or phrase by reading it as a number, or sometimes by using an alphanumeric cipher. The letters of the alphabets involved have standar ...

represents the number 2. Bet is the first letter of the

Torah The Torah ( , "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. The Torah is also known as the Pentateuch () ...

. 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 () are statutes and legal interpretations that were not recorded in the Five Books of Moses, the Written Torah (), and which are regarded by Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Jews as prescriptive ...

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

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

Genesis Rabbah Genesis Rabbah (, also known as Bereshit Rabbah and abbreviated as GenR) is a religious text from Judaism's classical period, probably written between 300 and 500 CE with some later additions. It is an expository midrash comprising a collection of ...

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>

Syriac beth

In the

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

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

Gimel Gimel is the third (in alphabetical order; fifth in spelling order) letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''gīml'' 𐤂, Hebrew ''gīmel'' , Aramaic ''gāmal'' 𐡂, Syriac ''gāmal'' ܓ and Arabic ''ǧīm'' . It is also rela ...

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

Kaph Kaph (also spelled kaf) is the eleventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ''kāp'' 𐤊, Hebrew ''kāp̄'' , Aramaic ''kāp'' 𐡊, Syriac ''kāp̄'' ܟ, and Arabic ''kāf'' (in abjadi order). It is also related to the Anc ...

, Pe and Taw). When Beth has a hard pronunciation (''qûššāyâ'') it is a . When Beth has a soft pronunciation (''rûkkāḵâ'') it is traditionally pronounced as a , similar to its Hebrew form. However, in eastern dialects, the soft Beth is more often pronounced as a , and can form

diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

s 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 (; from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), or consonant lengthening, 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 The Syriac language ( ; ), also known natively in its spoken form in early Syriac literature as Edessan (), the Mesopotamian language () and Aramaic (), is an Eastern Middle Aramaic dialect. Classical Syriac is the academic term used to refer ...

, some speakers always pronounce Beth with its hard sound.

Other uses

Mathematics

set theory Set theory is the branch of mathematical logic that studies Set (mathematics), 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 mathema ...

, 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 Hebrew lett ...