The name bet is derived from the West Semitic word for "house", and the shape of the letter derives from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph that may have been based on the Egyptian hieroglyph Pr O1 which depicts a house.
Hieroglyph
Proto-Sinaitic
Phoenician
Paleo-Hebrew
O1
Arabic
The Arabic letter ب is named باء bāʾ. It is written in several ways depending on its position in the word: The letter normally renders sound, except in some names and loanwords where it can also render, often arabized as, as in برسيل. For, it may be used interchangeably with the Persian letter پ - pe in this case.
Hebrew Bet / Vet
Hebrew spelling: The Hebrew letter represents two different phonemes: a "b" sound and a "v" sound . The two are distinguished by a dot in the centre of the letter for and no dot for. This letter is named bet and vet, following the modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, bet and vet, in Israel and by most Jews familiar with Hebrew, although some non-Israeli Ashkenazi speakers pronounce it beis and veis . It is also named beth, following the Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation, in academic circles. In modern Hebrew the frequency of the usage of bet, out of all the letters, is 4.98%.
When the Bet has a "dot" in its center, known as a dagesh, then it represents. There are various rules in Hebrew grammar that stipulate when and why a dagesh is used.
Bet without the dagesh (Vet)
When this letter appears as without the dagesh in its center then it represents a voiced labiodental fricative:.
Mystical significance of
Bet in gematria represents 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. According to Jewish legend, the letter Bet was specially chosen among the twenty two letters in Hebrew by God as the first letter of Torah as it begins with "Bereshit God created heaven and earth." 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 the Syriac alphabet, the second letter is ܒ — Beth. It is one of six letters that represents two associated sounds. When Beth has a hard pronunciation it is a . When Beth has a soft pronunciation 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 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 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 preposition '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.
