The earliest examples of writtenPaleo-Hebrewdate back to the 10th century BCE.[17]Nearly all of theHebrew Bibleis written inBiblical Hebrew,with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, during the time of theBabylonian captivity.For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews asLashon Hakodesh(לְשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶש,lit.'the holy tongue'or'the tongue [of] holiness') since ancient times. The language was not referred to by the nameHebrewin theBible,but asYehudit(transl. 'Judean') orSəpaṯ Kəna'an(transl. "the language ofCanaan").[1][note 2]Mishnah Gittin 9:8refers to the language asIvrit,meaning Hebrew; however,Mishnah Megillahrefers to the language asAshurit,meaningAssyrian,which is derived from the name ofthe alphabet used,in contrast toIvrit,meaning thePaleo-Hebrew alphabet.[18]
One of the earliest references to the language's name as "Ivrit"is found in the prologue to theBook of Sirach,[note 4][clarification needed]from the 2nd century BCE.[31]The Hebrew Bible does not use the term "Hebrew" in reference to the language of the Hebrew people;[32]its later historiography, in theBook of Kings,refers to it asיְהוּדִיתYehudit"Judahite(language) ".[33]
According to Avraham Ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in theKingdoms of IsraelandJudahduring the period from about 1200 to 586 BCE.[35]Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a spoken vernacular in ancient times following theBabylonian exilewhen the predominant international language in the region wasOld Aramaic.
Hebrew was extinct as a colloquial language bylate antiquity,but it continued to be used as a literary language, especially in Spain, as the language of commerce between Jews of different native languages, and as the liturgical language of Judaism, evolving various dialects of literaryMedieval Hebrew,until itsrevival as a spoken languagein the late 19th century.[36][37]
TheShebna Inscription,from the tomb of a royal steward found inSiloam,dates to the 7th century BCE.
In May 2023, Scott Stripling published the finding of what he claims to be the oldest known Hebrew inscription, acurse tablet found at Mount Ebal,dated from around 3200 years ago. The presence of the Hebrewname of god,Yahweh, as three letters,Yod-Heh-Vav(YHV), according to the author and his team meant that the tablet is Hebrew and not Canaanite.[38][39]However, practically all professional archeologists and epigraphers apart from Stripling's team claim that there is no text on this object.[40]
In July 2008, Israeli archaeologistYossi Garfinkeldiscovereda ceramic shardatKhirbet Qeiyafathat he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating from around 3,000 years ago.[41]Hebrew UniversityarchaeologistAmihai Mazarsaid that the inscription was "proto-Canaanite" but cautioned that"[t]hedifferentiation between the scripts, and between the languages themselves in that period, remains unclear ", and suggested that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far.[42]
TheGezer calendaralso dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of theMonarchic period,the traditional time of the reign ofDavidandSolomon.Classified asArchaic Biblical Hebrew,the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar (named afterthe cityin whose proximity it was found) is written in an old Semitic script, akin to thePhoenicianone that, through theGreeksandEtruscans,later became theLatin alphabetofancient Rome.The Gezer calendar is written without anyvowels,and it does not useconsonants to imply vowelseven in the places in which later Hebrew spelling requires them.
Numerous older tablets have been found in the region with similar scripts written in other Semitic languages, for example,Proto-Sinaitic.It is believed that the original shapes of the script go back toEgyptian hieroglyphs,though the phonetic values are instead inspired by theacrophonicprinciple. The common ancestor of Hebrew and Phoenician is calledCanaanite,and was the first to use a Semitic alphabet distinct from that of Egyptian. One ancient document is the famousMoabite Stone,written in the Moabite dialect; theSiloam inscription,found nearJerusalem,is an early example of Hebrew. Less ancient samples of Archaic Hebrew include theostraca found near Lachish,which describe events preceding the final capture of Jerusalem byNebuchadnezzarand the Babylonian captivity of 586 BCE.
In its widest sense, Biblical Hebrew refers to the spoken language of ancient Israel flourishing betweenc. 1000 BCEandc. 400 CE.[43]It comprises several evolving and overlapping dialects. The phases of Classical Hebrew are often named after important literary works associated with them.
Archaic Biblical Hebrew, also called Old Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew, from the 10th to the 6th century BCE, corresponding to the Monarchic Period until theBabylonian exileand represented by certain texts in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), notably theSong of Moses(Exodus 15) and theSong of Deborah(Judges 5). It was written in thePaleo-Hebrew alphabet.A script descended from this, theSamaritan alphabet,is still used by theSamaritans.
Hebrew script used inwriting a Torah scroll.Note ornamental "crowns"on tops of certain letters.Standard Biblical Hebrew, also called Biblical Hebrew, Early Biblical Hebrew, Classical Biblical Hebrew or Classical Hebrew (in the narrowest sense), around the 8th to 6th centuries BCE, corresponding to the late Monarchic period and the Babylonian exile. It is represented by the bulk of the Hebrew Bible that attains much of its present form around this time.
Late Biblical Hebrew, from the 5th to the 3rd centuries BCE, corresponding to thePersian periodand represented by certain texts in the Hebrew Bible, notably the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Basically similar to Classical Biblical Hebrew, apart from a few foreign words adopted for mainly governmental terms, and some syntactical innovations such as the use of the particleshe-(alternative of "asher", meaning "that, which, who" ). It adopted theImperial Aramaic script(from which the modern Hebrew script descends).
Israelian Hebrewis a proposed northern dialect of biblical Hebrew, believed to have existed in all eras of the language, in some cases competing with late biblical Hebrew as an explanation for non-standard linguistic features of biblical texts.
Early post-Biblical Hebrew
Dead Sea ScrollHebrew from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, corresponding to the Hellenistic and Roman Periods before thedestruction of the Templein Jerusalem, and represented by the Qumran Scrolls that form most (but not all) of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Commonly abbreviated as DSS Hebrew, also called Qumran Hebrew. The Imperial Aramaic script of the earlier scrolls in the 3rd century BCE evolved into theHebrew square scriptof the later scrolls in the 1st century CE, also known asketav Ashuri(Assyrian script), still in use today.
Mishnaic Hebrewfrom the 1st to the 3rd or 4th century CE, corresponding to the Roman Period after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and represented by the bulk of theMishnahandToseftawithin theTalmudand by the Dead Sea Scrolls, notably theBar Kokhbaletters and theCopper Scroll.Also called Tannaitic Hebrew or Early Rabbinic Hebrew.
Sometimes the above phases of spoken Classical Hebrew are simplified into "Biblical Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 10th century BCE to 2nd century BCE and extant in certain Dead Sea Scrolls) and "Mishnaic Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE and extant in certain other Dead Sea Scrolls).[44]However, today most Hebrew linguists classify Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew as a set of dialects evolving out of Late Biblical Hebrew and into Mishnaic Hebrew, thus including elements from both but remaining distinct from either.[45]
By the start of the Byzantine Period in the 4th century CE, Classical Hebrew ceased as a regularly spoken language, roughly a century after the publication of the Mishnah, apparently declining since the aftermath of the catastrophicBar Kokhba revoltaround 135 CE.
AfterCyrus the Greatconquered Babylon, he allowed the Jewish people to return from captivity.[47][48]In time, a local version of Aramaic came to be spoken in Israel alongside Hebrew. By the beginning of theCommon Era,Aramaic was the primary colloquial language ofSamarian,BabylonianandGalileeanJews, and western and intellectual Jews spokeGreek,[citation needed]but a form of so-calledRabbinic Hebrewcontinued to be used as a vernacular in Judea until it was displaced by Aramaic, probably in the 3rd century CE. CertainSadducee,Pharisee,Scribe,Hermit, Zealot and Priest classes maintained an insistence on Hebrew, and all Jews maintained their identity with Hebrew songs and simple quotations from Hebrew texts.[21][49][50]
While there is no doubt that at a certain point, Hebrew was displaced as the everyday spoken language of most Jews, and that its chief successor in the Middle East was the closely related Aramaic language, thenGreek,[49][note 3]scholarly opinions on the exact dating of that shift have changed very much.[20]In the first half of the 20th century, most scholars followedAbraham GeigerandGustaf Dalmanin thinking that Aramaic became a spoken language in the land of Israel as early as the beginning of Israel'sHellenistic periodin the 4th century BCE, and that as a corollary Hebrew ceased to function as a spoken language around the same time.Moshe Zvi Segal,Joseph Klausnerand Ben Yehuda are notable exceptions to this view. During the latter half of the 20th century, accumulating archaeological evidence and especially linguistic analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls has disproven that view. The Dead Sea Scrolls, uncovered in 1946–1948 nearQumranrevealed ancient Jewish texts overwhelmingly in Hebrew, not Aramaic.
The Qumran scrolls indicate that Hebrew texts were readily understandable to the average Jew, and that the language had evolved since Biblical times as spoken languages do.[note 5]Recent scholarship recognizes that reports of Jews speaking in Aramaic indicate a multilingual society, not necessarily the primary language spoken. Alongside Aramaic, Hebrew co-existed within Israel as a spoken language.[52]Most scholars now date the demise of Hebrew as a spoken language to the end of theRoman period,or about 200 CE.[53]It continued on as a literary language down through theByzantine periodfrom the 4th century CE.
The exact roles of Aramaic and Hebrew remain hotly debated. A trilingual scenario has been proposed for the land of Israel. Hebrew functioned as the localmother tonguewith powerful ties to Israel's history, origins and golden age and as the language of Israel's religion; Aramaic functioned as the international language with the rest of the Middle East; and eventually Greek functioned as another international language with the eastern areas of the Roman Empire.[citation needed]William Schniedewindargues that after waning in the Persian period, the religious importance of Hebrew grew in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and cites epigraphical evidence that Hebrew survived as a vernacular language – though both its grammar and its writing system had been substantially influenced by Aramaic.[54]According to another summary, Greek was the language of government, Hebrew the language of prayer, study and religious texts, and Aramaic was the language of legal contracts and trade.[55]There was also a geographic pattern: according toBernard Spolsky,by the beginning of the Common Era, "Judeo-Aramaicwas mainly used in Galilee in the north, Greek was concentrated in the former colonies and around governmental centers, and Hebrew monolingualism continued mainly in the southern villages of Judea. "[49]In other words, "in terms of dialect geography, at the time of thetannaimPalestine could be divided into the Aramaic-speaking regions of Galilee and Samaria and a smaller area, Judaea, in whichRabbinic Hebrewwas used among the descendants of returning exiles. "[21][50]In addition, it has been surmised thatKoine Greekwas the primary vehicle of communication in coastal cities and among the upper class ofJerusalem,while Aramaic was prevalent in the lower class of Jerusalem, but not in the surrounding countryside.[55]After the suppression of theBar Kokhba revoltin the 2nd century CE, Judaeans were forced to disperse. Many relocated to Galilee, so most remaining native speakers of Hebrew at that last stage would have been found in the north.[56]
The ChristianNew Testamentcontains some Semitic place names and quotes.[57]The language of such Semitic glosses (and in general the language spoken by Jews in scenes from the New Testament) is often referred to as "Hebrew" in the text,[58]although this term is often re-interpreted as referring to Aramaic instead[note 6][note 7]and is rendered accordingly in recent translations.[60]Nonetheless, these glosses can be interpreted as Hebrew as well.[61]It has been argued that Hebrew, rather than Aramaic or Koine Greek, lay behind the composition of theGospel of Matthew.[62](See theHebrew Gospel hypothesisorLanguage of Jesusfor more details on Hebrew and Aramaic in the gospels.)
The term "Mishnaic Hebrew" generally refers to the Hebrew dialects found in theTalmud,excepting quotations from the Hebrew Bible. The dialects organize into Mishnaic Hebrew (also calledTannaiticHebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, orMishnaicHebrew I), which was aspoken language,andAmoraicHebrew (also called Late Rabbinic Hebrew or Mishnaic Hebrew II), which was aliterary language.The earlier section of the Talmud is the Mishnah that was published around 200 CE, although many of the stories take place much earlier, and were written in the earlier Mishnaic dialect. The dialect is also found in certain Dead Sea Scrolls. Mishnaic Hebrew is considered to be one of the dialects of Classical Hebrew that functioned as a living language in the land of Israel. A transitional form of the language occurs in the other works of Tannaitic literature dating from the century beginning with the completion of the Mishnah. These include thehalachicMidrashim(Sifra,Sifre,Mekhiltaetc.) and the expanded collection of Mishnah-related material known as theTosefta.The Talmud contains excerpts from these works, as well as further Tannaitic material not attested elsewhere; the generic term for these passages isBaraitot.The dialect of all these works is very similar to Mishnaic Hebrew.
About a century after the publication of the Mishnah, Mishnaic Hebrew fell into disuse as a spoken language. By the third century CE, sages could no longer identify the Hebrew names of many plants mentioned in the Mishnah. Only a few sages, primarily in the southern regions, retained the ability to speak the language and attempted to promote its use.[63]According to theJerusalem Talmud,Megillah 1:9: "Rebbi Jonathan fromBet Guvrrinsaid, four languages are appropriate that the world should use them, and they are these: The Foreign Language (Greek) for song, Latin for war, Syriac for elegies, Hebrew for speech. Some are saying, also Assyrian (Hebrew script) for writing. "[64][63]
The later section of the Talmud, theGemara,generally comments on the Mishnah and Baraitot in two forms of Aramaic. Nevertheless, Hebrew survived as a liturgical and literary language in the form of later Amoraic Hebrew, which occasionally appears in the text of the Gemara, particularly in the Jerusalem Talmud and the classicalaggadah midrashes.
Hebrew was always regarded as the language of Israel's religion, history and national pride, and after it faded as a spoken language, it continued to be used as alingua francaamong scholars and Jews traveling in foreign countries.[65]After the 2nd century CE when theRoman Empireexiled most of the Jewish population of Jerusalem following theBar Kokhba revolt,they adapted to the societies in which they found themselves, yet letters, contracts, commerce, science, philosophy, medicine, poetry and laws continued to be written mostly in Hebrew, which adapted by borrowing and inventing terms.
After the Talmud, various regional literary dialects ofMedieval Hebrewevolved. The most important isTiberian Hebrewor Masoretic Hebrew, a local dialect ofTiberiasinGalileethat became the standard for vocalizing theHebrew Bibleand thus still influences all other regional dialects of Hebrew. This Tiberian Hebrew from the 7th to 10th century CE is sometimes called "Biblical Hebrew" because it is used to pronounce the Hebrew Bible; however, properly it should be distinguished from the historical Biblical Hebrew of the 6th century BCE, whose original pronunciation must be reconstructed. Tiberian Hebrew incorporates the scholarship of theMasoretes(frommasoretmeaning "tradition" ), who addedvowel pointsandgrammar pointsto the Hebrew letters to preserve much earlier features of Hebrew, for use in chanting the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretes inherited a biblical text whose letters were considered too sacred to be altered, so their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the letters. TheSyriac alphabet,precursor to theArabic alphabet,also developed vowel pointing systems around this time. TheAleppo Codex,a Hebrew Bible with the Masoretic pointing, was written in the 10th century, likely in Tiberias, and survives into the present day. It is perhaps the most important Hebrew manuscript in existence.
The need to express scientific and philosophical concepts fromClassical GreekandMedieval Arabicmotivated Medieval Hebrew to borrow terminology and grammar from these other languages, or to coin equivalent terms from existing Hebrew roots, giving rise to a distinct style of philosophical Hebrew. This is used in the translations made by theIbn Tibbonfamily. (Original Jewish philosophical works were usually written in Arabic.[citation needed]) Another important influence wasMaimonides,who developed a simple style based onMishnaic Hebrewfor use in his law code, theMishneh Torah.Subsequent rabbinic literature is written in a blend between this style and the Aramaized Rabbinic Hebrew of the Talmud.
Hebrew persevered through the ages as the main language for written purposes by all Jewish communities around the world for a large range of uses—not only liturgy, but also poetry, philosophy, science and medicine, commerce, daily correspondence and contracts. There have been many deviations from this generalization such asBar Kokhba's letters to his lieutenants, which were mostly in Aramaic,[68]and Maimonides' writings, which were mostly in Arabic;[69]but overall, Hebrew did not cease to be used for such purposes. For example, the first Middle East printing press, in Safed (modern Israel), produced a small number of books in Hebrew in 1577, which were then sold to the nearby Jewish world.[70]This meant not only that well-educated Jews in all parts of the world could correspond in amutually intelligiblelanguage, and that books and legal documents published or written in any part of the world could be read by Jews in all other parts, but that an educated Jew could travel and converse with Jews in distant places, just as priests and other educated Christians could converse in Latin. For example, RabbiAvraham Danzigwrote theChayei Adamin Hebrew, as opposed toYiddish,as a guide toHalachafor the "average17-year-old "(Ibid. Introduction 1). Similarly, RabbiYisrael Meir Kagan's purpose in writing theMishnah Berurahwas to "produce a work that could be studied daily so that Jews might know the proper procedures to follow minute by minute". The work was nevertheless written in Talmudic Hebrew and Aramaic, since, "the ordinary Jew [of Eastern Europe] of a century ago, was fluent enough in this idiom to be able to follow the Mishna Berurah without any trouble."[71]
Hebrew has beenrevivedseveral times as a literary language, most significantly by theHaskalah(Enlightenment) movement of early and mid-19th-century Germany. In the early 19th century, a form of spoken Hebrew had emerged in the markets of Jerusalem between Jews of different linguistic backgrounds to communicate for commercial purposes. This Hebrew dialect was to a certain extent apidgin.[72]Near the end of that century the Jewish activistEliezer Ben-Yehuda,owing to the ideology of thenational revival(שיבת ציון,Shivat Tziyon,laterZionism), began reviving Hebrew as a modern spoken language. Eventually, as a result of the local movement he created, but more significantly as a result of the new groups of immigrants known under the name of theSecond Aliyah,it replaced a score of languages spoken by Jews at that time. Those languages were Jewish dialects of local languages, includingJudaeo-Spanish(also called "Judezmo" and "Ladino" ),Yiddish,Judeo-ArabicandBukhori(Tajiki), or local languages spoken in theJewish diasporasuch asRussian,PersianandArabic.
The major result of the literary work of the Hebrew intellectuals along the 19th century was a lexical modernization of Hebrew. New words and expressions were adapted asneologismsfrom the large corpus of Hebrew writings since the Hebrew Bible, or borrowed from Arabic (mainly by Ben-Yehuda) and older Aramaic and Latin. Many new words were either borrowed from or coined after European languages, especially English, Russian, German, and French. Modern Hebrew became an official language in British-ruled Palestine in 1921 (along with English and Arabic), and then in 1948 became an official language of the newly declaredState of Israel.Hebrew is the most widely spoken language in Israel today.
In the Modern Period, from the 19th century onward, the literary Hebrew tradition revived as the spoken language of modern Israel, called variouslyIsraeli Hebrew,Modern Israeli Hebrew,Modern Hebrew,New Hebrew,Israeli Standard Hebrew,Standard Hebrewand so on. Israeli Hebrew exhibits some features ofSephardic Hebrewfrom its local Jerusalemite tradition but adapts it with numerous neologisms, borrowed terms (often technical) from European languages and adopted terms (often colloquial) from Arabic.
The literary and narrative use of Hebrew was revived beginning with the Haskalah movement. The first secular periodical in Hebrew,Ha-Me'assef(The Gatherer), was published bymaskiliminKönigsberg(today'sKaliningrad) from 1783 onwards.[73]In the mid-19th century, publications of several Eastern European Hebrew-language newspapers (e.g.Hamagid,founded inEłkin 1856) multiplied. Prominent poets wereHayim Nahman BialikandShaul Tchernichovsky;there were also novels written in the language.
Therevival of the Hebrew languageas amother tonguewas initiated in the late 19th century by the efforts of Ben-Yehuda. He joined theJewish national movementand in 1881 immigrated toPalestine,then a part of theOttoman Empire.Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora "shtetl"lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop tools for making theliteraryandliturgical languageinto everydayspoken language.However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been replaced inEastern Europeby different grammar and style, in the writings of people likeAhad Ha'amand others. His organizational efforts and involvement with the establishment of schools and the writing of textbooks pushed thevernacularizationactivity into a gradually accepted movement. It was not, however, until the 1904–1914 Second Aliyah that Hebrew had caught real momentum in Ottoman Palestine with the more highly organized enterprises set forth by the new group of immigrants. When theBritish Mandate of Palestinerecognized Hebrew as one of the country's three official languages (English, Arabic, and Hebrew, in 1922), its new formal status contributed to its diffusion. A constructed modern language with a truly Semitic vocabulary and written appearance, although often European inphonology,was to take its place among the current languages of the nations.
While many saw his work as fanciful or evenblasphemous[74](because Hebrew was the holy language of the Torah and therefore some thought that it should not be used to discuss everyday matters), many soon understood the need for a common language amongst Jews of the British Mandate who at the turn of the 20th century were arriving in large numbers from diverse countries and speaking different languages. A Committee of the Hebrew Language was established. After the establishment of Israel, it became theAcademy of the Hebrew Language.The results of Ben-Yehuda's lexicographical work were published in a dictionary (The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew,Ben-Yehuda Dictionary). The seeds of Ben-Yehuda's work fell on fertile ground, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the Jewish population of both Ottoman and British Palestine. At the time, members of theOld Yishuvand a very fewHasidicsects, most notably those under the auspices ofSatmar,refused to speak Hebrew and spoke only Yiddish.
In the Soviet Union, the use of Hebrew, along with other Jewish cultural and religious activities, was suppressed. Soviet authorities considered the use of Hebrew "reactionary" since it was associated with Zionism, and the teaching of Hebrew at primary and secondary schools was officially banned by thePeople's Commissariat for Educationas early as 1919, as part of an overall agenda aiming tosecularizeeducation (the language itself did not cease to be studied at universities for historical and linguistic purposes[75]). The official ordinance stated that Yiddish, being the spoken language of the Russian Jews, should be treated as their only national language, while Hebrew was to be treated as a foreign language.[76]Hebrew books and periodicals ceased to be published and were seized from the libraries, although liturgical texts were still published until the 1930s. Despite numerous protests,[77]a policy of suppression of the teaching of Hebrew operated from the 1930s on. Later in the 1980s in theUSSR,Hebrew studies reappeared due to people struggling for permission to go to Israel (refuseniks). Several of the teachers were imprisoned, e.g.Yosef Begun,Ephraim Kholmyansky,Yevgeny Korostyshevskyand others responsible for a Hebrew learning network connecting many cities of the USSR.
Hebrew,Arabicand English multilingual signs on an Israeli highwayDual languageHebrewand English keyboard
Standard Hebrew, as developed by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, was based onMishnaicspelling andSephardi Hebrewpronunciation. However, the earliest speakers of Modern Hebrew had Yiddish as their native language and often introducedcalquesfrom Yiddish andphono-semantic matchingsof international words.
Despite using Sephardic Hebrew pronunciation as its primary basis, modern Israeli Hebrew has adapted toAshkenazi Hebrewphonologyin some respects, mainly the following:
the replacement ofpharyngeal articulationin the letterschet(ח) andayin(ע) by most Hebrew speakers with uvular [χ] and glottal [ʔ], respectively, by most Hebrew speakers.
the pronunciation (by many speakers) oftzere<ֵ> as[eɪ]in some contexts (sifréjandtéjšainstead of Sephardicsifréandtésha)
the partial elimination of vocalShva<ְ> (zmáninstead of Sephardiczĕman)[78]
in popular speech, penultimate stress in proper names (Dvórainstead ofDĕvorá;Yehúdainstead ofYĕhudá) and some other words[79]
similarly in popular speech, penultimate stress in verb forms with a second person plural suffix (katávtem"you wrote" instead ofkĕtavtém).[note 8]
The vocabulary of Israeli Hebrew is much larger than that of earlier periods. According toGhil'ad Zuckermann:
The number of attested Biblical Hebrew words is 8198, of which some 2000 arehapax legomena(the number of Biblical Hebrew roots, on which many of these words are based, is 2099). The number of attested Rabbinic Hebrew words is less than 20,000, of which (i) 7879 are Rabbinic par excellence, i.e. they did not appear in the Old Testament (the number of new Rabbinic Hebrew roots is 805); (ii) around 6000 are a subset of Biblical Hebrew; and (iii) several thousand are Aramaic words which can have a Hebrew form. Medieval Hebrew added 6421 words to (Modern) Hebrew. The approximate number of new lexical items in Israeli is 17,000 (cf. 14,762 in Even-Shoshan 1970 [...]). With the inclusion of foreign and technical terms [...], the total number of Israeli words, including words of biblical, rabbinic and medieval descent, is more than 60,000.[80]: 64–65
In Israel, Modern Hebrew is currently taught in institutions calledUlpanim(singular: Ulpan). There are government-owned, as well as private, Ulpanim offering online courses and face-to-face programs.
Modern Hebrew is the primary official language of the State of Israel. As of 2013[update],there are about 9 million Hebrew speakers worldwide,[81]of whom 7 million speak it fluently.[82][83][84]
Currently, 90% of Israeli Jews are proficient in Hebrew, and 70% are highly proficient.[85]Some 60% of Israeli Arabs are also proficient in Hebrew,[85]and 30% report having a higher proficiency in Hebrew than in Arabic.[24]In total, about 53% of the Israeli population speaks Hebrew as a native language,[86]while most of the rest speak it fluently. In 2013 Hebrew was the native language of 49% of Israelis over the age of 20, withRussian,Arabic,French,English,YiddishandLadinobeing the native tongues of most of the rest. Some 26% ofimmigrants from the former Soviet Unionand 12% of Arabs reported speaking Hebrew poorly or not at all.[85][87]
Steps have been taken to keep Hebrew the primary language of use, and to prevent large-scale incorporation of English words into the Hebrew vocabulary. TheAcademy of the Hebrew Languageof theHebrew University of Jerusalemcurrently invents about 2,000 new Hebrew words each year for modern words by finding an original Hebrew word that captures the meaning, as an alternative to incorporating more English words into Hebrew vocabulary. TheHaifamunicipality has banned officials from using English words in official documents, and is fighting to stop businesses from using only English signs to market their services.[88]In 2012, aKnessetbill for the preservation of the Hebrew language was proposed, which includes the stipulation that all signage in Israel must first and foremost be in Hebrew, as with all speeches by Israeli officials abroad. The bill's author, MKAkram Hasson,stated that the bill was proposed as a response to Hebrew "losing its prestige" and children incorporating more English words into their vocabulary.[89]
Hebrew is one of several languages for which the constitution of South Africa calls to be respected in their use for religious purposes.[8]Also, Hebrew is an official national minority language inPoland,since 6 January 2005.[7]Hamashas made Hebrew a compulsory language taught in schools in the Gaza Strip.[90]
Biblical Hebrewhad a typical Semitic consonant inventory, with pharyngeal/ʕħ/,a series of "emphatic" consonants (possiblyejective,but this is debated), lateral fricative/ɬ/,and in its older stages also uvular/χʁ/./χʁ/merged into/ħʕ/in later Biblical Hebrew, and/bɡdkpt/underwent allophonic spirantization to[vɣðxfθ](known asbegadkefat). The earliest Biblical Hebrew vowel system contained the Proto-Semitic vowels/aaːiiːuuː/as well as/oː/,but this system changed dramatically over time.
By the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls,/ɬ/had shifted to/s/in the Jewish traditions, though for the Samaritans it merged with/ʃ/instead.[45]The Tiberian reading tradition of the Middle Ages had the vowel system/aɛeiɔouăɔ̆ɛ̆/,though other Medieval reading traditions had fewer vowels.
A number of reading traditions have been preserved in liturgical use. In Oriental (SephardiandMizrahi) Jewish reading traditions, the emphatic consonants are realized as pharyngealized, while theAshkenazi(northern and eastern European) traditions have lost emphatics and pharyngeals (although according to Ashkenazi law, pharyngeal articulation is preferred over uvular or glottal articulation when representing the community in religious service such as prayer andTorah reading), and show the shift of/w/to/v/.TheSamaritantradition has a complex vowel system that does not correspond closely to theTiberiansystems.
Modern Hebrew pronunciation developed from a mixture of the different Jewish reading traditions, generally tending towards simplification. In line withSephardi Hebrewpronunciation, emphatic consonants have shifted to their ordinary counterparts,/w/to/v/,and[ɣðθ]are not present. Most Israelis today also merge/ʕħ/with/ʔχ/,do not have contrastive gemination, and pronounce/r/as a uvular fricative[ʁ]or a voiced velar fricative/ɣ/rather than an alveolar trill, because of Ashkenazi Hebrew influences. The consonants/tʃ/and/dʒ/have become phonemic due to loan words, and/w/has similarly been re-introduced.
Proto-Semitic*śwas still pronounced as[ɬ]in Biblical Hebrew, but no letter was available in the Phoenician alphabet, so the letterשhad two pronunciations, representing both/ʃ/and/ɬ/.Later on, however,/ɬ/merged with/s/,but the old spelling was largely retained, and the two pronunciations ofשwere distinguished graphically inTiberian Hebrewasשׁ/ʃ/vs.שׂ/s/</ɬ/.
Biblical Hebrew as of the 3rd century BCE apparently still distinguished the phonemesġversusʻandḫversusḥ,as witnessed by transcriptions in theSeptuagint.As in the case of/ɬ/,no letters were available to represent these sounds, and existing letters did double duty:חfor/χ/and/ħ/andעfor/ʁ/and/ʕ/.In all of these cases, however, the sounds represented by the same letter eventually merged, leaving no evidence (other than early transcriptions) of the former distinctions.
Hebrew and Aramaic underwentbegadkefatspirantization at a certain point, whereby the stop sounds/bɡdkpt/weresoftenedto the corresponding fricatives[vɣðxfθ](writtenḇ ḡ ḏ ḵ p̄ ṯ) when occurring after a vowel and not geminated. This change probably happened after the original Old Aramaic phonemes/θ,ð/disappeared in the 7th century BCE,[91]and most likely occurred after the loss of Hebrew/χ,ʁ/c. 200 BCE.[note 9]It is known to have occurred in Hebrew by the 2nd century.[92]After a certain point this alternation became contrastive in word-medial and final position (though bearing lowfunctional load), but in word-initial position they remained allophonic.[93]InModern Hebrew,the distinction has a higher functional load due to the loss of gemination, although only the three fricatives/vχf/are still preserved (the fricative/x/is pronounced/χ/in modern Hebrew). (The others are pronounced like the corresponding stops, as Modern Hebrew pronunciation was based on theSephardic pronunciationwhich lost the distinction)
Hebrew grammar is partlyanalytic,expressing such forms asdative,ablativeandaccusativeusingprepositionalparticles rather thangrammatical cases.However, inflection plays a decisive role in the formation of verbs and nouns. For example, nouns have aconstruct state,called "smikhut",to denote the relationship of" belonging to ": this is the converse of thegenitive caseof more inflected languages. Words insmikhutare often combined withhyphens.In modern speech, the use of the construct is sometimes interchangeable with the preposition "shel",meaning" of ". There are many cases, however, where older declined forms are retained (especially in idiomatic expressions and the like), and" person "-encliticsare widely used to "decline" prepositions.
Morphology
Like all Semitic languages, the Hebrew language exhibits a pattern of stems consisting typically of "triliteral",or 3-consonantconsonantal roots,from which nouns, adjectives, and verbs are formed in various ways: e.g. by inserting vowels, doubling consonants, lengthening vowels and/or adding prefixes, suffixes orinfixes.4-consonant roots also exist and became more frequent in the modern language due to a process of coining verbs from nouns that are themselves constructed from 3-consonant verbs. Some triliteral roots lose one of their consonants in most forms and are called "Nakhim" (Resting).
Hebrew uses a number ofone-letter prefixesthat are added to words for various purposes. These are called inseparable prepositions or "Letters of Use" (Hebrew:אותיות השימוש,romanized:Otiyot HaShimush). Such items include: the definitearticleha-(/ha/) (= "the" );prepositionsbe-(/be/) (= "in" ),le-(/le/) (= "to"; a shortened version of the prepositionel),mi-(/mi/) (= "from"; a shortened version of the prepositionmin);conjunctionsve-(/ve/) (= "and" ),she-(/ʃe/) (= "that"; a shortened version of the Biblical conjunctionasher),ke-(/ke/) (= "as", "like"; a shortened version of the conjunctionkmo).
The Hebrew word for "Hebrew" (עברית) in itscursive form
The vowel accompanying each of these letters may differ from those listed above, depending on the first letter or vowel following it. The rules governing these changes are hardly observed in colloquial speech as most speakers tend to employ the regular form. However, they may be heard in more formal circumstances. For example, if a preposition is put before a word that begins with a movingShva,then the preposition takes the vowel/i/(and the initial consonant may be weakened): colloquialbe-kfar(= "in a village" ) corresponds to the more formalbi-khfar.
The definite article may be inserted between a preposition or a conjunction and the word it refers to, creating composite words likemé-ha-kfar(= "from the village" ). The latter also demonstrates the change in the vowel ofmi-.Withbe,leandke,the definite article is assimilated into the prefix, which then becomesba,laorka.Thus *be-ha-matosbecomesba-matos(= "in the plane" ). This does not happen tomé(the form of "min" or "mi-" used before the letter "he" ), thereforemé-ha-matosis a valid form, which means "from the airplane".
* indicates that the given example is grammaticallynon-standard.
Syntax
Like most other languages, the vocabulary of the Hebrew language is divided into verbs, nouns, adjectives and so on, and its sentence structure can be analyzed by terms like object, subject and so on.
Though earlyBiblical Hebrewhad aVSOordering, this gradually transitioned to a subject-verb-object ordering. Many Hebrew sentences have several correct orders of words.
Hebrew sentences do not have to include verbs; thecopulain thepresent tenseis omitted. For example, the sentence "I am here" (אני פהani po) has only two words; one for I (אני) and one for here (פה). In the sentence "I am that person" (אני הוא האדם הזהani hu ha'adam ha'ze), the word for "am" corresponds to the word for "he" (הוא). However, this is usually omitted. Thus, the sentence (אני האדם הזה) is more often used and means the same thing.
Negative and interrogative sentences have the same order as the regular declarative one. A question that has a yes/no answer begins with"האם"(ha'im,an interrogative form of 'if'), but it is largely omitted in informal speech.
In Hebrew there is a specific preposition (אתet) for direct objects that would not have a preposition marker in English. The English phrase "he ate the cake" would in Hebrew beהוא אכל את העוגהhu akhal et ha'ugah(literally, "He ateאתthe cake "). The wordאת,however, can be omitted, makingהוא אכל העוגהhu akhal ha'ugah( "He ate the cake" ). Former Israeli Prime MinisterDavid Ben-Gurionwas convinced thatאתshould never be used as it elongates the sentence without adding meaning.
In spoken Hebrew את ה-et ha-is also often contracted to -תַ'ta-,e.g.ת'אנשיםta-anashiminstead ofאת האנשיםet ha-anashim(the ' indicates non-standard use). This phenomenon has also been found by researchers in theBar Kokhba documents:מעיד אני עליתשמים…שאני נותןתכבליםברגליכם,writingתללוinstead ofאת הללו,as well asתדקלand so on.[citation needed]
Users of the language write Modern Hebrew fromright to leftusing theHebrew alphabet– an "impure"abjad,or consonant-only script, of 22 letters. The ancientpaleo-Hebrew alphabetresembles those used forCanaaniteandPhoenician.[94][95]Modern scripts derive from the "square" letter form, known asAshurit(Assyrian), which developed from theAramaic script.Acursive Hebrewscript is used in handwriting: the letters tend to appear more circular in form when written in cursive, and sometimes vary markedly from their printed equivalents. The medieval version of the cursive script forms the basis of another style, known asRashi script.When necessary, vowels are indicated bydiacriticmarks above or below the letter representing the syllabic onset, or by use ofmatres lectionis,which are consonantal letters used as vowels. Further diacritics may serve to indicate variations in the pronunciation of the consonants (e.g.bet/vet,shin/sin); and, in some contexts, to indicate the punctuation, accentuation and musical rendition of Biblical texts (seeHebrew cantillation).
Hebrew has always been used as the language of prayer and study, and the following pronunciation systems are found.
Ashkenazi Hebrew,originating in Central and Eastern Europe, is still widely used in Ashkenazi Jewish religious services and studies in Israel and abroad, particularly in theHarediand otherOrthodoxcommunities. It was influenced byYiddishpronunciation.
Mizrahi (Oriental) Hebrewis actually a collection of dialects spoken liturgically by Jews in various parts of theArabandIslamicworld. It was derived from the oldArabic language,and in some cases influenced by Sephardi Hebrew.Yemenite HebreworTemanitdiffers from other Mizrahi dialects by having a radically different vowel system, and distinguishing between different diacritically marked consonants that are pronounced identically in other dialects (for example gimel and "ghimel".)
These pronunciations are still used in synagogue ritual and religious study in Israel and elsewhere, mostly by people who are not native speakers of Hebrew. However, some traditionalist Israelis use liturgical pronunciations in prayer.
Many synagogues in the diaspora, even though Ashkenazi by rite and by ethnic composition, have adopted the "Sephardic" pronunciation in deference to Israeli Hebrew. However, in many British and American schools and synagogues, this pronunciation retains several elements of its Ashkenazi substrate, especially the distinction betweentsereandsegol.
^abSáenz-Badillos, Ángel (1993): "There is general agreement that two main periods of RH (Rabbinical Hebrew) can be distinguished. The first, which lasted until the close of the Tannaitic era (around 200 CE), is characterized by RH as a spoken language gradually developing into a literary medium in which the Mishnah, Tosefta,baraitotand Tannaiticmidrashimwould be composed. The second stage begins with theAmoraimand sees RH being replaced by Aramaic as the spoken vernacular, surviving only as a literary language. Then it continued to be used in later rabbinic writings until the tenth century in, for example, the Hebrew portions of the two Talmuds and in midrashic and haggadic literature. "[21]
^Fernández & Elwolde: "It is generally believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically the Copper Scroll and also the Bar Kokhba letters, have furnished clear evidence of the popular character of MH [Mishnaic Hebrew]."[51]
^The Cambridge History of Judaism: "Thus in certain sources Aramaic words are termed 'Hebrew,'... For example: η επιλεγομενη εβραιστι βηθεσδα 'which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda' (John 5.2). This is not a Hebrew name but rather an Aramaic one: בית חסדא, 'the house of Hisda'."[52]
^Fitzmyer, Joseph A.: "The adverbἙβραϊστί(and its related expressions) seems to mean 'in Hebrew', and it has often been argued that it means this and nothing more. As is well known, it is used at times with words and expressions that are clearly Aramaic. Thus in John 19:13,Ἑβραιστὶ δὲ Γαββαθᾶis given as an explanation of the Lithostrotos, andΓαββαθᾶis a Grecized form of the Aramaic word gabbětā, 'raised place.' "[59]
^These pronunciations may have originated in learners' mistakes formed on the analogy of other suffixed forms (katávta,alénu), rather than being examples of residual Ashkenazi influence.
^According to the generally accepted view, it is unlikely that begadkefat spirantization occurred before the merger of/χ,ʁ/and/ħ,ʕ/,or else[x,χ]and[ɣ,ʁ]would have to be contrastive, which is cross-linguistically rare. However, Blau argues that it is possible that lenited/k/and/χ/could coexist even if pronounced identically, since one would be recognized as an alternating allophone (as apparently is the case in Nestorian Syriac). SeeBlau (2010:56).
^Yağmur, Kutlay (2001), Extra, G.; Gorter, D. (eds.),"Turkish and other languages in Turkey",The Other Languages of Europe,Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 407–427,ISBN978-1-85359-510-3,archivedfrom the original on 20 October 2023,retrieved6 October2023,"Mother tongue" education is mostly limited to Turkish teaching in Turkey. No other language can be taught as a mother tongue other than Armenian, Greek, and Hebrew, as agreed in the Lausanne Treaty [...] Like Jews and Greeks, Armenians enjoy the privilege of an officially recognized minority status. [...] No language other than Turkish can be taught at schools or at cultural centers. Only Armenian, Greek, and Hebrew are exceptions to this constitutional rule.
^Bayır, Derya (2013).Minorities and nationalism in Turkish law.Cultural Diversity and Law. Farnham:Ashgate Publishing.pp. 89–90.ISBN978-1-4094-7254-4.Archivedfrom the original on 14 October 2023.Retrieved12 October2023.Oran farther points out that the rights set out for the four categories are stated to be the 'fundamental law' of the land, so that no legislation or official action shall conflict or interfere with these stipulations or prevail over them (article 37). [...] According to the Turkish state, only Greek, Armenian and Jewish non-Muslims were granted minority protection by the Lausanne Treaty. [...] Except for non-Muslim populations - that is, Greeks, Jews and Armenians - none of the other minority groups' language rights have beende jureprotected by the legal system in Turkey.
^Questions and Answers: Freedom of Expression and Language Rights in Turkey.New York: Human Rights Watch. April 2002.Archivedfrom the original on 20 October 2023.Retrieved12 October2023.The Turkish government accepts the language rights of the Jewish, Greek and Armenian minorities as being guaranteed by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.
^Chomsky, William (1957).Hebrew: The Eternal Language.Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America. pp. 1–13.
^ab"Hebrew" inThe Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church,edit. F.L. Cross, first edition (Oxford, 1958), 3rd edition (Oxford 1997).The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Churchwhich once said, in 1958 in its first edition, that Hebrew "ceased to be a spoken language around the fourth century BCE", now says, in its 1997 (third) edition, that Hebrew "continued to be used as a spoken and written language in the New Testament period".
^"If you couldn't speak Greek by say the time of early Christianity you couldn't get a job. You wouldn't get a good job. A professional job. You had to know Greek in addition to your own language. And so you were getting to a point where Jews... the Jewish community in, say, Egypt and large cities like Alexandria didn't know Hebrew anymore, they only knew Greek. And so you need a Greek version in the synagogue." – Josheph Blankinsopp, Professor of Biblical Studies University of Notre Dame in A&E'sWho Wrote the Bible
^abcSpolsky, Bernard; Shohamy, Elana (1999).The Languages of Israel: Policy, Ideology and Practice.Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Vol. 17. Multilingual Matters Ltd. p. 9.ISBN978-1-85359-451-9.
^abFernandez, Miguel Perez (1997).An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew.BRILL.
^An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew(Fernández & Elwolde 1999, p.2)
^abThe Cambridge History of Judaism: The late Roman-Rabbinic period. 2006. P.460
^Borrás, Judit Targarona and Ángel Sáenz-Badillos (1999). Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. P.3
^abSpolsky, B. (1985). "Jewish Multilingualism in the First century: An Essay in Historical Sociolinguistics", Joshua A. Fishman (ed.),Readings in The Sociology of Jewish Languages,Leiden: E. J. Brill, pp. 35–50. Also adopted by Smelik, Willem F. 1996. The Targum of Judges. P.9
^Fitzmyer, Joseph A. 1979. A Wandering Armenian: Collected Aramaic Essays. P.43
^Geoffrey W. Bromley (ed.)The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia,W.B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan 1979, 4 vols. vol.1 sub.'Aramaic' p.233: 'in the Aramaic vernacular of Palestine'
^Randall Buth and Chad Pierce "EBRAISTI in Ancient Texts, Does ἑβραιστί ever Mean 'Aramaic'?" in Buth and Notley eds., Language Environment of First Century Judaea, Brill, 2014:66–109. p. 109 "no, Ἑβραιστί does not ever appear to mean Aramaic in attested texts during the Second Temple and Graeco-Roman periods."; p. 107 "John did not mention what either βεθεσδα or γαββαθα meant. They may both have been loanwords from Greek and Latin respectively." p103 "βεθεσδα... (בית-אסטא(ן... house of portico... 3Q15 אסטאן הדרומית southern portico," and Latin gabata (p. 106) "means platter, dish... perhaps a mosaic design in the pavement..." The Latin loanword is attested as "bowl" in laterChristian Palestinian Aramaicand גבתא is (p106) "unattested in other Aramaic dialects" [contra the allegations of many].
^Grintz, Jehoshua M., "Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language in the Last Days of the Second Temple", Journal of Biblical Literature (1960) 79 (1): pp. 32–47.https://doi.org/10.2307/3264497Archived28 July 2024 at theWayback Machine
^abהר, משה דוד (2022). "היהודים בארץ-ישראל בימי האימפריה הרומית הנוצרית" [The Jews in the Land of Israel in the Days of the Christian Roman Empire].ארץ-ישראל בשלהי העת העתיקה: מבואות ומחקרים[Eretz Israel in Late Antiquity: Introductions and Studies] (in Hebrew). Vol. 1. ירושלים: יד יצחק בן-צבי. p. 218.ISBN978-965-217-444-4.
^Dolgopolsky, Aron(1999).From Proto-Semitic to Hebrew: Phonology: etymological approach in a Hamito-Semitic perspective.Milano: Centro Studi Camito-Semitici. p. 72.
^Blau, Joshua(2010).Phonology and Morphology of Biblical Hebrew: An Introduction.Linguistic studies in ancient West Semitic. Vol. 2 (revised ed.). Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. pp. 78–81.ISBN978-1-57506-129-0.No text access via Google Books.
^Wilson-Wright, Aren M. (2019)."The Canaanite languages"(PDF).In Huehnergard, John; Pat-El, Na'ama (eds.).The Semitic languages.Routledge language family series (2nd ed.). London New York (N. Y.) Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. p. 511.ISBN978-0-415-73195-9.Archived(PDF)from the original on 6 November 2022.Retrieved15 May2024.
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