() and the two dots of (). When words containing the symbol are borrowed into other languages written in the Arabic alphabet (such as Persian), usually becomes either a regular or a regular . Hebrew Tav Hebrew spelling: Hebrew pronunciation The letter tav in Modern Hebrew usually represents a voiceless alveolar plosive: . Variations on written form and pronunciation The letter tav is one of the six letters that can receive a dagesh kal diacritic; the others are bet, gimel, dalet, kaph and pe. Bet, kaph and pe have their sound values changed in modern Hebrew from the fricative to the plosive, by adding a dagesh. In modern Hebrew, the other three do not change their pronunciation with or without a dagesh, but they have had alternate pronunciations at other times and places. In traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation, tav represents an without the dagesh and has the plosive form when it has the dagesh. Among Yemen and some Sephardi areas, tav without a dagesh represented a voiceless dental fricative —a pronunciation hailed by the Sfath Emeth work as wholly authentic, while the tav with the dagesh is the plosive . In traditional Italian pronunciation, tav without a dagesh is sometimes . Tav with a geresh () is sometimes used in order to represent the TH digraph in loanwords. Significance of tav In gematria, tav represents the number 400, the largest single number that can be represented without using the (final) forms (see kaph, mem, nun, pe, and tzade). In representing names from foreign languages, a geresh or chupchik can also be placed after the tav (), making it represent . (See also: Hebraization of English) In Judaism Tav is the last letter of the Hebrew word emet, which means 'truth'. The midrash explains that emet is made up of the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph, mem, and tav: ). Sheqer (שקר, falsehood), on the other hand, is made up of the 19th, 20th, and 21st (and penultimate) letters. Thus, truth is all-encompassing, while falsehood is narrow and deceiving. In Jewish mythology it was the word emet that was carved into the head of the golem which ultimately gave it life. But when the letter aleph was erased from the golem's forehead, what was left was "met"—dead. And so the golem died. Ezekiel 9:4 depicts a vision in which the tav plays a Passover role similar to