table with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Two subsets of consonants, however, deserve further comment. Emphatics The sounds notated here as "emphatic consonants" occur in nearly all Semitic languages as well as in most other Afroasiatic languages, and they are generally reconstructed as glottalization in Proto-Semitic. Thus, *ṭ, for example, represents . See below for the fricatives/affricates. In modern Semitic languages, emphatics are variously realized as pharyngealized (Arabic, Aramaic, Tiberian Hebrew (such as ), glottalized (Ethiopian Semitic languages, Modern South Arabian languages, such as ), or as tenuis consonants (Turoyo language of Tur Abdin such as ); Ashkenazi Hebrew and Maltese are exceptions and emphatics merge into plain consonants in various ways under the influence of Indo-European languages (Sicilian for Maltese, various languages for Hebrew). An emphatic labial *ṗ occurs in some Semitic languages, but it is unclear whether it was a phoneme in Proto-Semitic. The classical Ethiopian Semitic language Geʽez is unique among Semitic languages for contrasting all three of , , and . While and occur mostly in loanwords (especially from Greek), there are many other occurrences whose origin is less clear (such as hepʼä 'strike', häppälä 'wash clothes'). According to Hetzron, Hebrew developed an emphatic labial phoneme ṗ to represent unaspirated in Iranian and Greek. Fricatives The reconstruction of Proto-Semitic has nine fricative sounds that are reflected usually as sibilants in later languages, but whether all were already sibilants in Proto-Semitic is debated: Two voiced fricatives that eventually became, for example, for both in Hebrew and Geʽez (/ð/ in early Geʽez), but and in Arabic respectively Four voiceless fricatives () that became in Hebrew but in Arabic and /s/ in Geʽez (/θ/ in early Geʽez) () that became in Hebrew but in Arabic and Geʽez () that became (transcribed ś) in Hebrew but in Arabic and /ɬ/ in Geʽez () that became in Hebrew, Arabic and Geʽez Three emphatic fricatives () The precise sound of the Proto-Semitic fricatives, notably of , , and , remains a perplexing problem, and there are various systems of notation to describe them. The notation given here is traditional and is based on their pronunciation in Hebrew, which has traditionally been extrapolated to Proto-Semitic. The notation , , is found primarily in the literature on Old South Arabian, but more recently, it has been used by some authors to discuss Proto-Semitic to express a noncommittal view of the pronunciation of the sounds.