Taw, Tav or Taf is the twenty-second and last letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Taw (Modern Hebrew: Tav) ת and Arabic alphabet Tāʾ ت (look below). Its original sound value is /t/.
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Tau (Τ), Latin T, and Cyrillic Т.
Taf is said to have come from a mark; or asterisk-like marking, perhaps indicating a signature.
Its literal usage in the Torah denotes a wound ; or in modern semantics, carving into a canvas.
Hebrew spelling: תָו
The letter Tav in modern Hebrew usually represents a voiceless alveolar plosive /t/).
The letter Tav is one of the six letters which can receive a Dagesh Kal. The six are Bet, Gimmel, Daled, Kaph, Pe, and Tav (see Hebrew Alphabet for more about these letters). Three of them (Bet, Kaph, and Pe) have their sound values changed in modern Hebrew from the fricative to the plosive by adding a dagesh. The other three have the same pronunciation in modern Hebrew but have had alternate pronunciations at other times and places. In traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation, Tav represented an /s/ (a form which is still heard today, especially among Diaspora Jews) without the dagesh, and had the plosive form when it had the dagesh. In some Sephardi areas, some Chassidic groups, as well as Yemen, Tav without a dagesh represented a voiceless dental fricative /θ/ without a dagesh and the plosive form with the dagesh. See Bet, Daled, Kaph, Pe, and Gimmel.
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros. during the "Golden Age of American animation" as the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, the Tasmanian Devil, and many of the other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons. He later worked for Hanna-Barbera's television cartoons, most notably as the voice of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely in The Jetsons. Having earned the nickname “The Man of a Thousand Voices,” Blanc is regarded as one of the most influential people in the voice-acting industry.
At the time of his death, it was estimated that 20 million people heard his voice every day.
Blanc was born Melvin Jerome Blank in San Francisco, California, to Jewish parents Frederick and Eva Blank. The youngest of two children, he grew up in the neighborhood of Western Addition in San Francisco, and later in Portland, Oregon, attending Lincoln High School. Growing up, he had a fondness for voices and dialect, which he started to do as early as the age of 10. He claimed that when he was 16, he changed the spelling from "Blank" to "Blanc" because a teacher told him that he would amount to nothing and be, like his name, a "blank". Blanc joined The Order of DeMolay as a young man, and was eventually inducted into its Hall of Fame. He dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and split his time between leading an orchestra, becoming the youngest conductor in the country at the time at 17, and performing shtick in vaudeville shows around Washington, Oregon, and northern California.
June Foray (born September 18, 1917) is an American voice actress, best known as the voice of many animated characters (particularly Lucifer from Cinderella, Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Cindy Lou Who, Jokey Smurf, Witch Hazel, Granny, Natasha Fatale and Nell Fenwick). Her career has encompassed radio, theatrical shorts, feature films, television, record albums (particularly with Stan Freberg), video games, talking toys and other media. Foray was also one of the founding members of ASIFA-Hollywood, the society devoted to promoting and encouraging animation.
Foray was born as June Lucille Forer, the second of three children (the other two were her elder brother Bertram and younger sister Geraldine) to Maurice Forer and Ida E. Robinson in Springfield, Massachusetts, on September 18, 1917 (but some sources have incorrectly cited 1918, 1919 and 1920 as her year of birth). There her voice was first broadcast in a local radio drama when she was 12 years old; by age 15, she was doing regular radio voice work. Two years later, she moved to Los Angeles, California, and soon became a popular voice actress on radio, with regular appearances on coast-to-coast broadcasts starring Jimmy Durante, Bob Hope and Danny Thomas.