Syrian Jews
The Syrian pronunciation of Hebrew is similar to that of other Mizrahi communities and is influenced both by Sephardi Hebrew and by the Syrian dialect of Levantine Arabic. The Syrian pronunciation of Hebrew is less archaic than the Iraqi Hebrew of Iraqi Jews and closer to standard Sephardic Hebrew. That affects especially the interdentals. Nevertheless, Syrian and Iraqi Hebrew are very closely related because of their location and geographic proximity, as is the case with most eastern Jewish communities in the Arabic world other than Yemenite Jews. Particular features are as follows:The retention of distinct emphatic sounds such as and differentiates Syrian pronunciation from many other Sephardic/Mizrahi pronunciations, which have failed to maintain these phonemic or phonological distinctions, such as between and .
Arab (etymology)
In the Bible, the word "ʿarav" is closely associated with the word "ʿerev" meaning a "mix of people" which has identical spelling in unvowelled text. Jeremiah 25:24 parallels "kings of "ʿarav "" with "kings of the "ʿerev" that dwell in the wilderness". The account in 1 Kings 10:15 matching 2 Chronicles 9:14 is traditionally vowellized to read "kings of the "ʿerev" ". The people in question are understood to be the early Nabateans who do indeed appear to have been a mix of different tribes. The medieval writer Ibn an-Nadim, in "Kitab al-Fihrist", derived the word "Arab" from a Syriac pun by Abraham on the same root: in his account, Abraham addresses Ishmael and calls him "uʿrub", from Syriac "ʿrob", "mingle".