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 .
Arabic definite article
While the Proto-Semitic language did not have any articles, the most likely theory is that the article "al"- comes from the same proto-Semitic source as the Hebrew definite article "ha-". That theory is based primarily on the fact that the two share many similarities. Both particles are prefixed to nouns, and both geminate with certain following letters. Moreover, neither particle is prefixed to non-final nouns in a genitival construction. Finally, both are prefixed to relative clauses. According to David Testen, many northern and southwestern Semitic languages have particles that bear similarities to "al"-. With this fact, he posits that "al"- has a proto-Semitic antecedent.