Mizrahi Hebrew Tiberian notations. After the expulsion of the Sephardi Jews from Spain in 1492, the exiles took the leading position in most Arab and Ottoman countries, and the local pronunciation of Hebrew assimilated to Sephardi Hebrew in many respects, particularly for pronouncing the vowels. Today's Iraqi Jews distinguish between "patach" () and "segol" () in the same way as most other Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews. However, distinct sounds for the guttural and emphatic letters and the sound for "bet rafe" were retained in many Arab countries, probably under the influence of Arabic. Iraqi Jews, like Yemenite Jews, retain the Classical Arabic
Ashkenazi Hebrew eastern, e.g. Eastern Syriac "Peshitta" as against Western Syriac "Peshito". Ashkenazi Hebrew in its written form also resembles Palestinian Hebrew in its tendency to "male" spellings (see Mater lectionis). Others, including Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, believed that the distinction is more ancient, and represents the distinction between the Judaean and Galilean dialects of Hebrew in Mishnaic times (1st−2nd centuries CE), with the Sephardi pronunciation being derived from Judaean and the Ashkenazi from Galilean. This theory is supported by the fact that Ashkenazi Hebrew, like Samaritan Hebrew, has lost the distinct sounds of many of the guttural letters, while there are references