Tsade


Tsade is the eighteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Ṣādē, Hebrew Ṣādi צ, Aramaic Ṣāḏē, Syriac Ṣāḏē ܨ, Ge'ez Ṣädäy ጸ, and Arabic Ṣād ص. Its oldest sound value is probably, 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 ṣād and ṭāʾ to express the three. In Aramaic, these emphatic consonants coalesced instead with ʿayin and ṭēt, respectively, thus Hebrew ereṣ ארץ is araʿ ארע in Aramaic.
The Phoenician letter is continued in the Greek San and possibly Sampi, and in Etruscan ? Ś. It may have inspired the form of the letter Tse in the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets.
The corresponding letter of the Ugaritic alphabet is ? ṣade.
The letter is named "tsadek" in Yiddish, and Hebrew speakers often give it a similar name as well. This name for the letter probably originated from a fast recitation of the alphabet, influenced by the Hebrew word tzadik, meaning "righteous person".

Origins

The origin of ṣade is unclear. It may have come from a Proto-Sinaitic script based on a pictogram of a plant, perhaps a papyrus plant, or a fish hook.

Hebrew tsadi

Hebrew spelling: צָדִי or צָדֵי.

Name

In Hebrew, the letter's name is Tsadi or Ṣadi, depending on whether the letter is transliterated as Modern Israeli "ts" or Tiberian "ṣ".

Variations

Ṣadi, like Kaph, Mem, Pe, and Nun, has a final form, used at the end of words. Its shape changes from to.

Pronunciation

In Modern Hebrew, צ tsade represents a voiceless alveolar affricate. This is the same in Yiddish. Historically, it likely represented a pharyngealized ; which became in Ashkenazi pronunciation. A geresh can also be placed after tsade, giving it the sound, e.g. chips.
Ṣade appears as amongst Yemenite Jews and other Jews from the Middle East; the loss of affricatisation is likely due to influence from Arabic.
Some Sephardi Jews pronounce צ like a regular s.

Significance

In gematria, Ṣadi represents the number 90. Its final form represents 900, but this is rarely used, Taw, Taw, and Qof being used instead.
As an abbreviation, it stands for ṣafon, North.
Ṣadi is also one of the seven letters that receive a special crown when written in a Sefer Torah. See Shin, ‘Ayin, Ṭet, Nun, Zayin, and Gimmel.

Arabic ṣād

The letter is named ṣād  and in Modern Standard Arabic is pronounced.
It is written in several ways depending in its position in the word:
Surah Ṣād of the Quran is named forth letter, which begins the surah.
The phoneme is not native to Persian, Ottoman Turkish, or Urdu, and its pronunciation in Arabic loanwords in those languages is not distinguishable from س or ث, all of which are pronounced.

Character encodings