Spanish and Portuguese Jews location of the biblical Sepharad is disputed, but Sepharad was identified by later Jews as Hispania, that is, the Iberian Peninsula. Sepharad still means "Spain" in modern Hebrew. The relationship between Sephardi-descended communities is illustrated in the following diagram: "Sephardim" properly refers to all Jews whose families have extended histories in Spain and Portugal, in contrast to Ashkenazi Jews and all other Jewish ethnic divisions. However, Mizrahi Jews, who have extended histories in the Greater Middle East and North Africa, are often called "Sephardim" more broadly in colloquial and religious parlance due to similar styles of liturgy and a certain
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