テ
te
The phrase tae refers to the name of the letter 'T' in the English alphabet when written in Japanese as テ.
How do you pronounce it?
The pronunciation is te.
Did you know?
- The character テ was simplified from the man'yōgana kanji 天 during the Heian period.
- Because katakana is used for foreign loanwords, the character テ is a foundational building block for hundreds of words like 'television' (テレビ, terebi) or 'tennis' (テニス, tenisu).
- The character テ can be easily confused with ナ (na) by beginners because they both share a similar horizontal top stroke and rightward slant.
Examples in context
- 今日はTaeさん、元気？ (Konnichiwa Tae-san, genki?)Hello Tae, how are you?
- はい、元気だよ。ありがとう、Taeちゃん！ (Hai, genki da yo. Arigato, Tae-chan!)I'm good. Thank you, Tae-chan!
Example conversation
Misaki is helping Yota spell a word in English.
- 陽太 Yotaここは何の文字？Koko wa nan no moji?What letter is this?
- 美咲 Misakiそれはテだよ。Sore wa te dayo.That is T.
- 陽太 Yotaテか、分かった。Te ka, wakatta.T, I got it.
- 美咲 Misaki正解。次に行こう。Seikai. Tsugi ni ikou.Correct. Let's move to the next one.
Sources
- Word origins: Wiktionary entries テ, CC BY-SA 4.0.
