Hebrew language

Hebrew
עִבְרִית, Ivrit
Portion of the Isaiah Scroll, a second-century BCE manuscript of the Biblical Book of Isaiah and one of the best-preserved of the Dead Sea Scrolls
PronunciationModern: [ivˈʁit]
Tiberian: [ʕivˈriθ]
Biblical: [ʕibˈrit]
Native toIsrael

Syria

Eritrea (Only in israeli Milltary base)
RegionSouthern Levant
ExtinctMishnaic Hebrew extinct as a spoken language by the 5th century CE, surviving as a liturgical language along with Biblical Hebrew for Judaism
RevivalRevived in the late 19th century CE. 9 million speakers of Modern Hebrew, of which 5 million are native speakers and 3.3 million are second language speakers (2018)
Early forms
Standard forms
Dialects
Hebrew alphabet
Hebrew Braille
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet (Archaic Biblical Hebrew)
Imperial Aramaic script (Late Biblical Hebrew)
Samaritan script (Samaritan Biblical Hebrew)
Signed Hebrew (oral Hebrew accompanied by sign)
Official status
Official language in
Israel (as Modern Hebrew)
Recognised minority
language in
Regulated byAcademy of the Hebrew Language
האקדמיה ללשון העברית (ha-akademyah la-lashon ha-ʿivrit)
Language codes
ISO 639-1he
ISO 639-2heb
ISO 639-3Variously:
heb – Modern Hebrew
hbo – Classical Hebrew (liturgical)
smp – Samaritan Hebrew (liturgical)
obm – Moabite (extinct)
xdm – Edomite (extinct)
Glottologhebr1246
Linguasphere12-AAB-a
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
The word IVRIT ("Hebrew") written in modern Hebrew language (top) and in Paleo-Hebrew alphabet (bottom)

The Hebrew language, also referred to as the Hebraic language, is a Northwest Semitic language and is related to Arabic. It is the only dead language that has been revived.

Israeli Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew are separate languages with different grammar and different pronunciation, though speakers of Israeli Hebrew can usually read most of the Hebrew Bible.

Israeli Hebrew

Biblical Hebrew was spoken by the Israelites during the time of the composition of the Hebrew Bible but became rare in daily life after the Jews were forced to speak Aramaic.[source?]

In the 20th-century, Eliezer ben Yehuda[page needed] was the leading force behind the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language and the primary inventor of Israeli Hebrew, which became the official language of modern Israel in 1948.

Many words used in Biblical Hebrew to write the Hebrew Bible are given different meanings in Israeli Hebrew.

Grammar

Generally, Hebrew words are made by adding a vowel pattern to a root, though Israeli Hebrew has loanwords from many languages. People often need to study the grammar of Hebrew before they can read fluently without written vowels.

In Israeli Hebrew, the verb for "to be" has a future tense and a past tense but no present tense.[source?] In Biblical Hebrew, there are no tenses but only two aspects: perfective and imperfective.[source?] One way to describe this is a difference between past (perfective) and non-past (imperfective), though they can overlap. Biblical Hebrew has a special feature to explicitly mark a verb with somewhat of a future tense, which is the Vav Conversive.[page needed]

Mishnaic Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic were spoken at the time of Jesus and the time of the Bar-Kokhba revolt.[page needed]

The Hebrew script was adapted to write Yiddish, which is a language that has Hebrew vocabulary and was adapted from German and a few other Indo-European languages.

Aleph*BetGimelDaletHeVavZayinKhetTetYudKaph
א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ
ך
LamedMemNunSamekhAyinPeTsadiKufReshShinTav
ל מ נ ס ע פ צ ק ר ש ת
ם ן ף ץ

Notes

  1. ↑ Sephardi: [ʕivˈɾit]; Iraqi: [ʕibˈriːθ]; Yemenite: [ʕivˈriːθ]; Ashkenazi: [ivˈʀis] or [ivˈris], strict pronunciation [ʔivˈris] or [ʔivˈʀis].

References

  1. ↑ Sáenz-Badillos (1993)
  2. ↑ H. S. Nyberg 1952. Hebreisk Grammatik. s. 2. Reprinted in Sweden by Universitetstryckeriet, Uppsala, 2006.
  3. ↑ Modern Hebrew at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
    Classical Hebrew (liturgical) at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
    Samaritan Hebrew (liturgical) at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
    Moabite (extinct) at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
    Edomite (extinct) at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
  4. ↑ "Hebrew". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 14 May 2020. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
  5. ↑ Meir, Irit; Sandler, Wendy (2013). A Language in Space: The Story of Israeli Sign Language.
  6. ↑ "Basic Law: Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People" (PDF). The Knesset. The State of Israel. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 April 2021. Retrieved 31 August 2020.
  7. ↑ Pisarek, Walery. "The relationship between official and minority languages in Poland" (PDF). European Federation of National Institutions for Language. Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 December 2019. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  8. ↑ "Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 – Chapter 1: Founding Provisions | South African Government". www.gov.za. Archived from the original on 18 May 2019. Retrieved 2020-08-29.
  9. ↑ 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, ISBN 978-1-85359-510-3, archived from the original on 20 October 2023, retrieved 2023-10-06, "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.{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  10. ↑ Zetler, Reyhan (2014). "Turkish Jews between 1923 and 1933 – What Did the Turkish Policy between 1923 and 1933 Mean for the Turkish Jews?" (PDF). Bulletin der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Judaistische Forschung (23): 26. OCLC 865002828. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 October 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
  11. ↑ Toktaş, Şule (2006). "EU enlargement conditions and minority protection : a reflection on Turkey's non-Muslim minorities". East European Quarterly. 40 (4): 489–519. ISSN 0012-8449. Archived from the original on 11 October 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023. p. 514: This implies that Turkey grants educational right in minority languages only to the recognized minorities covered by the Lausanne who are the Armenians, Greeks and the Jews.
  12. ↑ Bayır, Derya (2013). Minorities and nationalism in Turkish law. Cultural Diversity and Law. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. pp. 89–90. ISBN 978-1-4094-7254-4. Archived from the original on 14 October 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023. 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 been de jure protected by the legal system in Turkey.
  13. ↑ Questions and Answers: Freedom of Expression and Language Rights in Turkey. New York: Human Rights Watch. April 2002. Archived from the original on 20 October 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023. The Turkish government accepts the language rights of the Jewish, Greek and Armenian minorities as being guaranteed by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.
  14. ↑
  15. ↑ "Hebrew | Foreign Languages | Monroe Community College". www.monroecc.edu. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  16. 1 2 Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003). Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. England: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781403917232.