Isogloss map
Pick a Proto-Semitic phoneme below to see how each language in the family treats it. Green = preserved; amber = merged with another phoneme; gray = lost from the inventory. Coordinates are rough centroids of the traditional speech-area, not modern distribution.
What you're looking at
The Semitic family descends from a Proto-Semitic parent with a distinctive set of 29 consonants. Each daughter language kept some and merged or lost others. Selecting a PS phoneme above shows where in the family it survived as a distinct sound (green) vs. where it merged with another phoneme (amber) or dropped out entirely (gray).
Example: PS *ḍ (emphatic lateral) is preserved as Arabic ض, merged with *ṣ in Hebrew (צ) and Akkadian, and became ʿ in Aramaic/Syriac. This is why the triliteral root *ʾ-r-ḍ "earth" appears as Ar arḍ, Heb érets, Syc arʿā.