Ẓāʾ

Ẓāʾ ظَاءْ does not change its shape depending on its position in the word: In Classical Arabic, it represents a velarized voiced dental fricative [ðˠ], and in Modern Standard Arabic, it represents an pharyngealized voiced dental [ðˤ] but can also be a alveolar [zˤ] fricative for a number of speakers.

[1] A "de-emphaticized" pronunciation of both letters in the form of the plain /z/ entered into other non-Arabic languages such as Persian, Urdu, Turkish.

In some reconstructions of Proto-Semitic phonology, there is an emphatic interdental fricative, ṯ̣/ḏ̣ ([θˤ] or [ðˤ]), featuring as the direct ancestor of Arabic ẓādʾ, while it merged with ṣ in most other Semitic languages, although the South Arabian alphabet retained a symbol for ẓ.

Often, words that have ظ ẓāʾ, ص ṣād, and ض ḍād in Arabic have cognates with צ tsadi in Hebrew.

When representing this sound in transliteration of Arabic into Hebrew, it is written as ט׳ tet and a geresh or with a normal ז zayin.