comes from the Greek
tau and the Semitic tav. In early Semitic tav resembled a simple cross
that became the Phoenician symbol. Tav was the last letter of the
Greek alphabet until omega was created.
Both the Greek and Semetic alphabets had another
T-related letter (theta in Greek and
teth in Semitic) for the th sound. Old English also had two symbols —
the thorn and thok, or eth. The thorn was still used up until the spread of printing,
but because printers did not have a symbol for thorn they used a lowercase y, causing
the use of phrases like “ye olde farm”. The miniscule form of T was finally created
in the early Renaissance as the ascender rose over the cross bar. T is phonetically classified
as a point-breath-stop-consonant.
