1840: Emphatic ט in Ancient Hebrew Dec 29, 2019

Hebrew orthography has 3 letters that represent silence, sort of, as well as two ways to represent [t], and two ways to represent [s]. However, this was not always so redundant. Of the two ways to represent the sound [t] in Modern Hebrew ט and ת, both have changed over time, but ט has changed more minimally. This letter used to be emphatic, meaning the air was immediately blocked after making the sound. This feature was lost to time however, due to influences from Indo-European languages, just like with Maltese. More on this tomorrow

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