White Africans of European ancestry White Africans of European ancestry White Africans of European ancestry are Africans descended from any of the white ethnic groups originating on the European continent. In 1989, there were an estimated 5.6 million white people with European ancestry on the African continent. Most are of Dutch, British, Portuguese, German, French, and to a lesser extent, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Russians, Jewish (Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews) or Irish descent. The majority once lived along the Mediterranean coast, in South Africa, or in Zimbabwe. The earliest permanent European communities in Africa were formed at the Cape of Good Hope; Luanda, in Angola;
Ashkenazi Hebrew from Spain in 1492 (or before) the Sephardic pronunciation of the vowels became standard in all these countries, ironing out any differences that previously existed. This makes it harder to adjudicate between the different theories on the relationship between today's pronunciation systems and those of ancient times. Leopold Zunz believed that the Ashkenazi pronunciation was derived from that of Palestine in Geonic times (7th–11th centuries CE), while the Sephardi pronunciation was derived from that of Babylonia. This theory was supported by the fact that, in some respects, Ashkenazi Hebrew resembles the western dialect of Syriac while Sephardi Hebrew resembles the