following coronal consonant in pre-tonic position, shared by Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic. In Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, is nonexistent. In general cases, the language would lack pharyngeal fricative (as heard in Ayin). However, /ʕ/ is retained in educational speech, especially among Assyrian priests. The palatalization of Proto-Semitic gīm to Arabic jīm, is most probably connected to the pronunciation of qāf as a gāf (this sound change also occurred in Yemenite Hebrew), hence in most of the Arabian peninsula (which is the homeland of the Arabic language) is jīm and is gāf , except in western and southern Yemen and parts of Oman where is gīm and is qāf . Ugaritic orthography indicated the vowel after the glottal stop. The Arabic letter () has three main pronunciations in Modern Standard Arabic. in north Algeria, Iraq, also in most of the Arabian peninsula and as the predominant pronunciation of Literary Arabic outside the Arab world, occurs in most of the Levant and most North Africa; and is used in northern Egypt and some regions in Yemen and Oman. In addition to other minor allophones. The Arabic letter () has three main pronunciations in spoken varieties. in most of the Arabian Peninsula, Northern and Eastern Yemen and parts of Oman, Southern Iraq, Upper Egypt, Sudan, Libya, some parts of the Levant and to lesser extent in some parts (mostly rural) of Maghreb. in most of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, Southern and Western Yemen and parts of Oman, Northern Iraq, parts of the Levant especially Druze dialects. in most of the Levant and Lower Egypt, as well as some North African towns such as Tlemcen and Fez. In addition to other minor allophones. can be written , and always is in the Ugaritic and Arabic contexts. In Ugaritic, sometimes assimilates to , as in ġmʔ 'thirsty' (Arabic ẓmʔ, Hebrew ṣmʔ, but Ugaritic mẓmủ 'thirsty', root ẓmʔ, is also attested). Early Amharic might have had a different phonology. The pronunciations /ʕ/ and /ħ/ for ʿAyin and Ḥet, respectively, still occur among some older Mizrahi speakers, but for most modern Israelis, ʿAyin and Ḥet are realized as /ʔ, -/ and /χ ~ x/, respectively. The following table shows the development of the various fricatives in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic and Maltese through cognate words: possibly affricated (/dz/ /tɬʼ/ /ʦʼ/ /tθʼ/ /tɬ/) Vowels Proto-Semitic vowels are, in general, harder to deduce due to the nonconcatenative morphology of Semitic languages. The