Semitic people Y-chromosomal links between Semitic-speaking peoples of the Middle East like Arabs, Jews, Mandaeans, Samaritans, and Assyrians/Syriacs have shown links, despite differences contributed from other groups ("see Y-chromosomal Aaron"). A DNA study of "six Middle Eastern populations (Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Kurdish Jews from Israel; Muslim Kurds; Muslim Arabs from Israel and the Palestinian Authority Area; and Bedouin from the Negev)" found that Jews were more closely related to groups in the north of the Fertile Crescent (Kurds, Turks, and Armenians) than to their Arab neighbors. Genetic studies indicate that modern Jews (Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Mizrahi specifically), Levantine Arabs, Assyrians/Syriacs, Samaritans, Maronites,
Sephardi Hebrew of Hebrew in Mishnaic times (1st-2nd centuries), with the Sephardi pronunciation being derived from Judaean and the Ashkenazi from Galilean. The theory is supported by the fact that Ashkenazi Hebrew, like Samaritan Hebrew, has lost the distinct sounds of many of the guttural letters, and there are references in the Talmud to that as a feature of Galilean speech. Idelsohn ascribes the Ashkenazi (and, on his theory, Galilean) pronunciation of qamats gadol as to the influence of Phoenician: see Canaanite shift. During the Masoretes (8th-10th centuries), there were three distinct notations for denoting vowels and other details of pronunciation in