grammar 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 dagesh ("dot") in its center it represents a voiced labiodental fricative: . In Ktiv hasar niqqud spelling, without diacritics, the letter without the dot may represent either phoneme. 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 22 letters in Hebrew by God as the first letter of Torah as it begins with "Bereshit (In the beginning) God created heaven and earth." Genesis Rabbah 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. In mathematics In set theory, the beth numbers stand for powers of infinite sets. Syriac Beth In the Syriac alphabet, the second letter is — Beth (). It is one of six letters that represents two associated sounds (the others are Gimel, Dalet, Kaph, Pe and Taw). When Beth has a hard pronunciation (qûššāyâ) it is a [b]. When Beth has a soft pronunciation (rûkkāḵâ) it is traditionally pronounced as a [v], similar to its Hebrew form. However, in eastern dialects, the soft Beth is more often pronounced as a [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 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. Character encodings See also Bayt (disambiguation)Bayt/Beit/Beth/Bet (disambiguation), meaning 'house'