ط — taa (heavy)
«taa (heavy)» is a consonant of the Arabic script, read as “t (emphatic)”. A heavy "t" with no puff of air, same pulled-back tongue. For example, in the word “طالب” — student. The Arabic alphabet has 28 letters in total. The oval of ص broken open at the top. Do not confuse it with ف: ط carries no dots at all. It appears, for example, in the word “ببطء” — slowly.
In short
| Character | ط |
| Name | taa (heavy) |
| Sound | t (emphatic) |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 18th of 31: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are ض and ظ, appears in 389 words of this site.
How to type ط
- On a phone: add the Arabic keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+0637 and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 0637.
- Unicode code point: U+0637. With it, the character can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
A heavy "t" with no puff of air, same pulled-back tongue
Other written forms
The same character is written differently on a shop sign and in a book. Here are all the forms you may meet.
| Form | Character | Note |
|---|---|---|
| initial | طـ | — |
| medial | ـطـ | — |
| final | ـط | — |
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- طالبтаалибstudent
The character in the “ص ض ط ظ ق — the heavy consonants and the deep q” group
The emphatic consonants are "heavy" sounds with no soft partner: the tongue is pulled back and the whole syllable darkens. The pairs circle round: heavy s/d/t/z, told apart by skeleton and dots. Next to them the deep q, made down in the throat — it shares its sound with ف but not its depth.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «taa (heavy)» it is “t (emphatic)”, as in the word “طالب”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 28 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Arabic character ط read?
As “t (emphatic)” — it is a consonant of the Arabic script. A heavy "t" with no puff of air, same pulled-back tongue. For example, in the word “طالب” — student.
What is the letter ط called?
Taa (heavy). A character's name and its sound are different things in the Arabic script: it is called “taa (heavy)” and reads as “t (emphatic)”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.
What can ط be confused with?
The oval of ص broken open at the top. Do not confuse it with ف: ط carries no dots at all. Similar characters are best studied side by side and deliberately compared: learned on different days, they stay separate and get mixed up at their first meeting inside a word.