# Tav vs Sav



## Avishai

Hello,
I've been wondering for a long time, Is Sav a Hebrew letter or is it actually Yiddish?  In Israeli Hebrew I think there is only Tav but I may be wrong.


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## Mjolnir

Sav is not an Hebrew letter, Tav is.


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## Avishai

Thanks for your quick response.  I thought that was the case.  So is Sav a Yiddish letter?


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## Mjolnir

According to Wiki - no.

I can't post links yet so search for "Yiddish orthography" in Wiki to find out more about the Yiddish alphabet.


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## Avishai

Thanks for your suggestion.  I checked Wiki and it says that Sav is a Hebrew letter but only for Ashkenazim.  It also says that it is a Yiddish letter.  I suspect that it actually came from Yiddish and was adopted into Ashkenazi Hebrew but that's only a guess.


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## Mjolnir

You must've checked the Hebrew alphabet and not the Yiddish one, because Wiki says that Sav is not a Yiddish letter. It also says that Sav is only in Ashkenazi pronunciation (Tav with no dagesh), but in Israeli Hebrew, it is always a Tav.

Yiddish does have a Sof (their Tof with no dagesh), maybe that's what you meant.


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## David

The letter in question is ת, usually pronounced in traditional Ashkenazic (lit. "German," meaning East European) Hebrew, where the letter is called "tav," pronounced as an s. The modern Israeli pronunciation of Hebrew is based on the Sephardic, (lit. "Spanish", meaning Levantine, Near Eastern) pronunciation, where the letter is called also called tav, and pronounced as a t. Here is what´s confusing you: Hebrew words absorbed into Yiddish, basically a Germanic language, are spelled with the original Hebrew spellings, but pronounced either as in Ashkenazi Hebrew, or in a purely Yiddish way, and in such words, the tav is usually pronounced s. An example: אמת, truth, pronounced _emet_ in modern Israeli Hebrew, _emes_ in Ashkenazi Hebrew, and, in Yiddish, still given the Hebrew spelling with the second vowel omitted, e-m-t, but pronounced "emes," as if it were spelled עמעס (emes). When pronounced as t, the Yiddish letter is it is sometimes marked with a dot in the middle and called "tof" in Yiddish, and when pronounced as s, called "sof", not tav and sav.


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## ilbisaac

The previous post is correct. A "sof" and a "tof" in Yiddish and Ashkenazic Hebrew are different sounds and different letters, much as "beys" and "veys" are different ("bet" and "vet" in modern Hebrew). A "tof" has the dot inside, whereas a "sof" does not.

A "sof" will never be found at the beginning of a word, and is often at the end of a word. E.g., emes אמת, shabes שבת, khaloymes חלומות, and khasene חתונה. (Those mean "truth," "Saturday/the Sabbath," "dreams," and "wedding," respectively.) In addition to the "s" sound, the stress on each word usually goes on the second to last vowel syllable (as opposed to the last syllable in modern Hebrew). Therefore, SHA-bess rather than sha-BAT, and kha-LOY-mess rather than kha-lo-MOT.


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## Evee@

Avishai said:


> Hello,
> I've been wondering for a long time, Is Sav a Hebrew letter or is it actually Yiddish?  In Israeli Hebrew I think there is only Tav but I may be wrong.


I have been researching the subject.  "ת" and with a dot.
In short, it's two different letters, just like shin/sin or bet.vet. "T" with a dagesh (dot) and "S" without (Now mostly  Ashkenazi Hebrew, and in Yiddish too)
Modern Hebrew is just using Tav.


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## aavichai

To say "two different letters" is not accurate.
(And by the way, the relation between the letters Shin and Sin is not like the relation between Bet and Vet)

But indeed, in this case, the T/S is like the B/V.

The letter Tav without Dagesh was to be pronounced as "th" (like "thing).
And Askenazi pronounces it as "s" (th-->s).

In Modern Hebrew (and Sephardi) the T is always T.

But there are words that are used with that accent:
so תכל'ס is actually תכלית (first T as T, and the last T as S)
דוסים is  דתיים
בלבוסת is בעל-הבית
And so on...
This like slang that was loaned from the Askenazi accent.


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