Tau gallicum

The name ARAꟇꟇOVNA on a Gallic tomb.

Tau gallicum, or D with short stroke overlay in Unicode, (majuscule: Ꟈ (), minuscule: ꟈ ()) is a letter that was used to write the Gaulish language.[1] It is a D with the horizontal bar from the Greek letter Θ.[1] It likely represented a /t͡s/ or /st/ sound,[1] like the ts in cats or the st in stop. In modern times, it is used in the Cubeo and Daasanach languages to represent the sound [ð], in the Northern Embera language to represent the sound [ɗ], and in the Moro language.

Name

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The Latin phrase tau gallicum literally means "Gallic tau". The only known mention of the letter is found in Catalepton, a set of epigrams attributed to Virgil and collected after his death in Appendix Vergiliana.[2] The second epigram contains the following text:

Corinthiorum amator iste uerborum,
iste iste rhetor, namque quatenus totus
Thucydides, tyrannus Atticae febris:
tau Gallicum, min et sphin ut male illisit,
ita omnia ista uerba miscuit fratri.

— Virgil, Catalepton II

It is not known, however, whether the sound described by Virgil is the same as that for which the term is currently used.

Letter

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After using the Greek alphabet, the Gauls adopted the Latin alphabet to transcribe their language. However, to note a sound unknown to the second, they introduced the additional letter tau gallicum, said to have been inspired by the Greek letter Θ (theta). Its spelling is varies between ⟨Ꟈ⟩ and ⟨ꟉꟉ⟩.[1]

The letter can be found in the initial of the name of the Celtic goddess Sirona, whose name is written as: Sirona, Ꟈirona or Thirona, highlighting the difficulty of noting the initial sound in the Latin alphabet.

The letter is also present in the lead of Chamalières, a lead tablet discovered in 1971 in Chamalières and written in the Gallic language with Latin cursive letters: snIeꟈꟈdic, aꟈꟈedillI.

Pronunciation

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The precise value of the sound transcribed by the Gallic tau is not known. It is supposed that it denotes an alveolar affricate /t͡s/, in free variation with [st] in initial position.

Use on computers

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The letter is encoded into Unicode as U+A7C7 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D WITH SHORT STROKE OVERLAY and U+A7C8 LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH SHORT STROKE OVERLAY respectively.


Character information
Preview
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER D WITH SHORT STROKE OVERLAY LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH SHORT STROKE OVERLAY
Encodings decimal hex dec hex
Unicode 42951 U+A7C7 42952 U+A7C8
UTF-8 234 159 135 EA 9F 87 234 159 136 EA 9F 88
Numeric character reference Ꟈ Ꟈ ꟈ ꟈ

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Proposal for the addition of four Latin characters to the UCS. Michael Everson and Chris Lilley, 2019.
  2. ^ Frank, Tenney (1935). "Tau Gallicum, Vergil, Catalepton II, 4". The American Journal of Philology. 56 (3): 254–256. doi:10.2307/289677. ISSN 0002-9475. JSTOR 289677.