LingoflyTt tt — te te
«te te» is a digraph of the Basque script, read as “soft palatal ty”. A soft "ty" with an extra y-glide, the whole tongue pressed to the roof of the mouth. For example, in the word “ttantta” — drop. The Basque alphabet has 27 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. This character does not count as a letter of the alphabet. Ttipi — "little one", ttantta — "drop". These clusters grew out of baby talk and still sound affectionate.
In short
| Character | Tt tt |
| Name | te te |
| Sound | soft palatal ty |
| What it is | a digraph |
In our course the character comes 32nd of 32: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, before it comes tz.
How it sounds
A soft "ty" with an extra y-glide, the whole tongue pressed to the roof of the mouth
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.
- ttanttadrop
The character in the “soft sounds and the trill” group
ñ and tt are palatal sounds with a y-glide; they grew out of baby talk and affectionate speech. A matching pair for tt exists for d too, but it is met only a handful of times. rr is a trill between vowels. No word begins with a trill. Native words never start with r, and borrowed ones get a vowel in front — errege, arrosa.
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 «te te» it is “soft palatal ty”, as in the word “ttantta”), 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 — 27 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 Basque character tt read?
As “soft palatal ty” — it is a digraph of the Basque script. A soft "ty" with an extra y-glide, the whole tongue pressed to the roof of the mouth. For example, in the word “ttantta” — drop.
What is the sign tt called?
Te te. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Basque script: it is called “te te” and reads as “soft palatal ty”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.