in Jubb'adin under influence from Arabic. The labial consonant pair has collapsed to in all three villages. Amongst dental consonants, the fricatives are retained while have become in most places and , while remaining a phoneme, has had its traditional position in Aramaic words replaced by in Bakh'a, and in Maaloula and Jubb'adin. However, is the usual form for the relative particle in these two villages, with a variant , where Bakh'a always uses . Among the velar consonants, the traditional voiced pair of has collapsed into , while /ɡ/ still remains a phoneme in some words. The unvoiced velar fricative, , is retained, but its plosive complement , while also remaining a distinct phoneme, has in its traditional positions in Aramaic words started to undergo palatalization. In Bakh'a, the palatalization is hardly apparent; in Maaloula, it is more obvious, and often leads to ; in Jubb'adin, it has become , and has thus merged phonemically with the original positions of . The original uvular plosive, , has also moved forward in Western Neo-Aramaic. In Bakh'a it has become a strongly post-velar plosive, and in Maaloula more lightly post-velar. In Jubb'adin, however, it has replaced the velar plosive, and become . Consonants Vowels Western Neo-Aramaic has the following set of vowels: Close front unrounded vowel – Close-mid front unrounded vowel – Open front unrounded vowel – Open back rounded vowel – Close back rounded vowel – Alphabet Square Aramaic Alphabet Square Aramaic Alphabet used for Aromay/Western Neo-Aramaic. Words beginning with a vowel are written with an initial . Short vowels are omitted or written with diacritics, long vowels are transcribed with macrons (Āā, Ēē, Īī, Ōō, Ūū) and are written with mater lectionis ( for /o/ and /u/, for /i/, which are also used at the end of a word if it ends with one of these vowels and if a word begins with any of these long vowels, they begin with + the mater lectionis). Words ending with /a/ are written with at the end of the word, while words ending with /e/ are written with at the end. Sometimes is used both for final and instead of also using . Syriac and Arabic Alphabet Serto Syriac and Arabic alphabet used for Aromay/Western Neo-Aramaic. Alternate Aramaic Alphabet Characters of the script system similar to the Old Aramaic/Phoenician alphabet used occasionally for Western Neo-Aramaic with matching transliteration. The script is