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;
Sephardi Hebrew the Ashkenazi pronunciation was derived from that of Palestine in Geonic times (7th-11th centuries) and that the Sephardi pronunciation was derived from that of Babylonia. The theory was supported by the fact that in some respects, Ashkenazi Hebrew resembles the western dialect of Syriac, and Sephardi Hebrew resembles the eastern dialect: Eastern Syriac "Peshitta" as against Western Syriac "Peshito". Ashkenazi Hebrew, in its written form, also resembles Palestinian Hebrew in its tendency to "malē" 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