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'Tsade' (also spelled or 'Tzadi' or 'Sadhe' or 'Tzaddik') is the eighteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic alphabet . 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 and to express the three (see , ). In Aramaic, these emphatic consonants coalesced instead with '''' and '', respectively, thus Hebrew '' ארץ (earth) is '' ארעא in Aramaic.
The Phoenician letter is continued in the Greek Sampi and San and in Etruscan ''Ś''. It may have inspired the form of the letter Tse in the Glagolitic alphabet.
The corresponding letter of the Ugaritic alphabet is ''ṣade''.
Hebrew speakers may also call this letter ''Tsadiq'' (meaning "righteous person"; see ''Tzadik''), though this use probably originated from a fast recitation of the alphabet (i.e., "''tsadi'', ''qoph''" -> "''tsadiq'', ''qoph''").

Contents

Origins

Arabic ṣad

Hebrew tsade

Name

Pronunciation

Variations

Significance

See also

Origins

The origin of Tsade is unclear. It may have come from a Middle Bronze Age glyph based on a pictogram of a plant, perhaps a papyrus plant, or a fish hook (in Modern Hebrew, "tsad" means "[he] hunt[ed]", and Arabic "sad" means "to fish" or "to hunt").

Arabic ṣad

The letter is named ''ṣad'', and is written is several ways depending in its position in the word:

Hebrew tsade

Name

Other spellings of the name include , şādhê, çādhê, s`àdhê, tzadi, tzadik, tsodi, and tsodik. See Hebrew alphabet for a more detailed list of its various transliterations and pronunciations.

Pronunciation

In modern Hebrew, tzade represents a voiceless alveolar affricate (). This is the same in Yiddish language. Historically, it likely represented a pharyngealized ; Yemenite Jews still pronounce it this way.

Variations

Tzade, like Kaph, Mem, Pe, and Nun, has a final form, used at the end of words. Its shape changes from this: 'צ' to this: 'ץ'. The pronunciation is not changed.

Significance

In gematria, Tzade represents the number 90. Its final form represents 900 but this is rarely used, Tav, Tav, and Qoph (400+400+100) being used instead.
A ''geresh'' can also be placed after it ('צ), giving it the IPA sound //. This is most commonly seen in the Hebrew צ'יפּסים, meaning ''chips''. Scholars also use this rendering of the letter to unambiguously represent the Arabic and proto-Semitic .
As an abbreviation, it stands for ''tzafon'', North.
Tzade is also one of the seven letters which receive a special crown (called a ''tagin'') when written in a Sefer Torah. See Shin, Ayin, Teth, Nun, Zayin, and Gimmel.

See also

★ Shin (letter)

★ Ṣ

★ Z#Usage