Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. ''

Song of Moses (Exodus 15) and the

Song of Deborah According to the Book of Judges, Deborah (, ''Dəḇōrā'') was a Prophets in Judaism, prophetess of Judaism, the fourth Hebrew Bible judges, Judge of pre-monarchic Israel, and the only female shophet, judge mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Many ...

(Judges 5). It was written in the

Paleo-Hebrew alphabet The Paleo-Hebrew script (), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, including pre-Biblical and Biblical Hebrew, from southern Canaan, also known as the biblical kingdoms ...

. A script descended from this, the Samaritan alphabet, is still used by the

Samaritans Samaritans (; ; ; ), are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews and Israelites of the ancient Near East. They are indigenous to Samaria, a historical region of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah that ...

. *

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 the Persian period and 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 particle ''she-'' (alternative of "asher", meaning "that, which, who"). It adopted the

Imperial Aramaic script The ancient Aramaic alphabet was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian peoples throughout the Fertile Crescent. It was also adopted by other peoples as their own alphabet when empires and their subjects und ...

(from which the modern Hebrew script descends). *

Israelian Hebrew Israelian Hebrew (or IH) is a northern dialect of biblical Hebrew (BH) proposed as an explanation for various irregular linguistic features of the Masoretic Text (MT) of the Hebrew Bible. It competes with the alternative explanation that such fe ...

is 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 Scroll Hebrew from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, corresponding to the Hellenistic and Roman Periods before the destruction of the Temple in 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 the Hebrew square script of the later scrolls in the 1st century CE, also known as ''ketav Ashuri'' (Assyrian script), still in use today. *

Mishnaic Hebrew Mishnaic Hebrew () is the Hebrew language used in Talmudic texts. Mishnaic Hebrew can be sub-divided into Mishnaic Hebrew proper (c. 1–200 CE, also called Tannaim, Tannaitic Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or Mishnah, Mishnaic Hebrew I), which w ...

from 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 the

Mishnah The Mishnah or the Mishna (; , from the verb ''šānā'', "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first written collection of the Jewish oral traditions that are known as the Oral Torah. Having been collected in the 3rd century CE, it is ...

and

Tosefta The Tosefta ( "supplement, addition") is a compilation of Jewish Oral Law from the late second century, the period of the Mishnah and the Jewish sages known as the '' Tannaim''. Background Jewish teachings of the Tannaitic period were cha ...

within the

Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...

and by the Dead Sea Scrolls, notably the

Bar Kokhba Simon bar Kokhba ( ) or Simon bar Koseba ( ), commonly referred to simply as Bar Kokhba, was a Jewish military leader in Judaea (Roman province), Judea. He lent his name to the Bar Kokhba revolt, which he initiated against the Roman Empire in 1 ...

letters and the

Copper Scroll The Copper Scroll ( 3Q15) is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Cave 3 near Khirbet Qumran, but differs significantly from the others. Whereas the other scrolls are written on parchment or papyrus, this scroll is written on metal: copper mixed ...

. 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).M. Segal, ''A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927). 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. Qimron, Elisha (1986). ''The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls''. Harvard Semitic Studies 29. (Atlanta: Scholars Press). 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 catastrophic

Bar Kokhba revolt The Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 AD) was a major uprising by the Jews of Judaea (Roman province), Judaea against the Roman Empire, marking the final and most devastating of the Jewish–Roman wars. Led by Simon bar Kokhba, the rebels succeeded ...

around 135 CE.

Displacement by Aramaic

In the early 6th century BCE, the

Neo-Babylonian Empire The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to ancient Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC a ...

conquered the ancient

Kingdom of Judah The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelites, Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands to the west of the Dead Sea, the kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. It was ruled by the Davidic line for four centuries ...

, destroying much of

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

and exiling its population far to the east in

Babylon Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-s ...

. During the

Babylonian captivity The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile was the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were forcibly relocated to Babylonia by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The deportations occurred ...

, many

Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

learned

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

, the closely related Semitic language of their captors. Thus, for a significant period, the

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

elite became influenced by Aramaic. After

Cyrus the Great Cyrus II of Persia ( ; 530 BC), commonly known as Cyrus the Great, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Achaemenid dynasty (i. The clan and dynasty) Hailing from Persis, he brought the Achaemenid dynasty to power by defeating the Media ...

conquered Babylon, he allowed the Jewish people to return from captivity. In time, a local version of Aramaic came to be spoken in Israel alongside Hebrew. By the beginning of the

Common Era Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the ...

, Aramaic was the primary colloquial language of

Samaria Samaria (), the Hellenized form of the Hebrew name Shomron (), is used as a historical and Hebrew Bible, biblical name for the central region of the Land of Israel. It is bordered by Judea to the south and Galilee to the north. The region is ...

Babylonia Babylonia (; , ) was an Ancient history, ancient Akkadian language, Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria and Iran). It emerged as a ...

n and

Galilee Galilee (; ; ; ) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon consisting of two parts: the Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and the Lower Galilee (, ; , ). ''Galilee'' encompasses the area north of the Mount Carmel-Mount Gilboa ridge and ...

an Jews, and western and intellectual Jews spoke

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, but a form of so-called Rabbinic Hebrew continued to be used as a vernacular in Judea until it was displaced by Aramaic, probably in the 3rd century CE. Certain

Sadducee The Sadducees (; ) were a sect of Jews active in Judea during the Second Temple period, from the second century BCE to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. The Sadducees are described in contemporary literary sources in contrast to ...

Pharisee The Pharisees (; ) were a Jews, Jewish social movement and school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism. Following the Siege of Jerusalem (AD 70), destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, Pharisaic beliefs became ...

Scribe A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of Printing press, automatic printing. The work of scribes can involve copying manuscripts and other texts as well as ...

, 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. 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, then

, scholarly opinions on the exact dating of that shift have changed very much."Hebrew" in ''The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church'', edit. F.L. Cross, first edition (Oxford, 1958), 3rd edition (Oxford 1997). ''The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church'' which 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". In the first half of the 20th century, most scholars followed Abraham Geiger and Gustaf Dalman in thinking that Aramaic became a spoken language in the land of Israel as early as the beginning of Israel's

Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

in 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 Klausner Joseph Gedaliah Klausner (; 20 August 1874 – 27 October 1958), was a Lithuanian-born Israeli historian and professor of Hebrew literature. He was the chief redactor of the '' Encyclopedia Hebraica''. He was a candidate for president in the ...

and 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 near

Qumran Qumran (; ; ') is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, about south of the historic city of Jericho, and adjac ...

revealed 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. 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.The Cambridge History of Judaism: The late Roman-Rabbinic period. 2006. P.460 Most scholars now date the demise of Hebrew as a spoken language to the end of the

Roman period The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

, or about 200 CE. It continued on as a literary language down through the

Byzantine period The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived History of the Roman Empire, the events that caused the ...

from 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 local mother tongue with 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. William Schniedewind argues 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. 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. There was also a geographic pattern: according to Bernard Spolsky, by the beginning of the Common Era, "

Judeo-Aramaic The Judaeo-Aramaic languages are those varieties of Aramaic and Neo-Aramaic languages used by Jewish communities. Early use Aramaic, like Hebrew, is a Northwest Semitic language, and the two share many features. From the 7th century BCE, Ara ...

was 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." In other words, "in terms of dialect geography, at the time of the

tannaim ''Tannaim'' ( Amoraic Hebrew: תנאים "repeaters", "teachers", singular ''tanna'' , borrowed from Aramaic) were the rabbinic sages whose views are recorded in the Mishnah, from approximately 10–220 CE. The period of the Tannaim, also refe ...

Palestine could be divided into the Aramaic-speaking regions of Galilee and Samaria and a smaller area, Judaea, in which Rabbinic Hebrew was used among the descendants of returning exiles."Fernandez, Miguel Perez (1997). ''An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew''. BRILL. In addition, it has been surmised that

Koine Greek Koine Greek (, ), also variously known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek, Septuagint Greek or New Testament Greek, was the koiné language, common supra-regional form of Greek language, Greek spoken and ...

was the primary vehicle of communication in coastal cities and among the upper class of

, while Aramaic was prevalent in the lower class of Jerusalem, but not in the surrounding countryside.Spolsky, 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 After the suppression of the

in 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.Spolsky, B. (1985), p. 40. and ''passim'' Many scholars have pointed out that Hebrew continued to be used alongside Aramaic during Second Temple times, not only for religious purposes but also for nationalistic reasons, especially during revolts such as the

Maccabean Revolt The Maccabean Revolt () was a Jewish rebellion led by the Maccabees against the Seleucid Empire and against Hellenistic influence on Jewish life. The main phase of the revolt lasted from 167 to 160 BCE and ended with the Seleucids in control of ...

(167–160 BCE) and the emergence of the

Hasmonean kingdom The Hasmonean dynasty (; ''Ḥašmōnāʾīm''; ) was a ruling dynasty of Judea and surrounding regions during the Hellenistic times of the Second Temple period (part of classical antiquity), from BC to 37 BC. Between and BC the dynasty rule ...

, the Great Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE), and the

(132–135 CE). The nationalist significance of Hebrew manifested in various ways throughout this period. Michael Owen Wise notes that "Beginning with the time of the Hasmonean revolt ..Hebrew came to the fore in an expression akin to modern nationalism. A form of classical Hebrew was now a more significant written language than Aramaic within Judaea." This nationalist aspect was further emphasized during periods of conflict, as Hannah Cotton observing in her analysis of legal documents during the Jewish revolts against Rome that "Hebrew became the symbol of Jewish nationalism, of the independent Jewish State." The nationalist use of Hebrew is evidenced in several historical documents and artefacts, including the composition of 1 Maccabees in archaizing Hebrew, Hasmonean coinage under

John Hyrcanus John Hyrcanus (; ; ) was a Hasmonean (Maccabee, Maccabean) leader and Jewish High Priest of Israel of the 2nd century BCE (born 164 BCE, reigned from 134 BCE until he died in 104 BCE). In rabbinic literature he is often referred to as ''Yoḥana ...

(134-104 BCE), and coins from both the Great Revolt and Bar Kokhba Revolt featuring exclusively Hebrew and Palaeo-Hebrew script inscriptions. This deliberate use of Hebrew and Paleo-Hebrew script in official contexts, despite limited literacy, served as a symbol of Jewish nationalism and political independence. The Christian

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

contains some Semitic place names and quotes. 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, although this term is often re-interpreted as referring to Aramaic instead and is rendered accordingly in recent translations. Nonetheless, these glosses can be interpreted as Hebrew as well.

Mishnah and Talmud

The term "Mishnaic Hebrew" generally refers to the Hebrew dialects found in the

, excepting quotations from the Hebrew Bible. The dialects organize into Mishnaic Hebrew (also called

Tannaitic ''Tannaim'' ( Amoraic Hebrew: תנאים "repeaters", "teachers", singular ''tanna'' , borrowed from Aramaic) were the rabbinic sages whose views are recorded in the Mishnah, from approximately 10–220 CE. The period of the Tannaim, also refe ...

Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or Mishnaic Hebrew I), which was a

spoken language A spoken language is a form of communication produced through articulate sounds or, in some cases, through manual gestures, as opposed to written language. Oral or vocal languages are those produced using the vocal tract, whereas sign languages ar ...

, and Amoraic Hebrew (also called Late Rabbinic Hebrew or Mishnaic Hebrew II), which was a

literary language Literary language is the Register (sociolinguistics), register of a language used when writing in a formal, academic writing, academic, or particularly polite tone; when speaking or writing in such a tone, it can also be known as formal 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 the halachic

Midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
. ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; or ''midrashot' ...

im (

Sifra Sifra () is the Midrash halakha to the Book of Leviticus. It is frequently quoted in the Talmud and the study of it followed that of the Mishnah. Like Leviticus itself, the midrash is occasionally called Torat Kohanim, and in two passages ''Sifr ...

Sifre Sifre (; ''siphrēy'', ''Sifre, Sifrei'', also, ''Sifre debe Rab'' or ''Sifre Rabbah'') refers to either of two works of '' Midrash halakha'', or classical Jewish legal biblical exegesis, based on the biblical books of Numbers and Deuteronomy. ...

, Mekhilta etc.) and the expanded collection of Mishnah-related material known as the

. The Talmud contains excerpts from these works, as well as further Tannaitic material not attested elsewhere; the generic term for these passages is ''

Baraitot ''Baraita'' ( "external" or "outside"; pl. ''bārayāṯā'' or in Hebrew ''baraitot''; also baraitha, beraita; Ashkenazi pronunciation: berayse) designates a tradition in the Oral Torah of Rabbinical Judaism that is not incorporated in the Mi ...

''. 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. According to the

Jerusalem Talmud The Jerusalem Talmud (, often for short) or Palestinian Talmud, also known as the Talmud of the Land of Israel, is a collection of rabbinic notes on the second-century Jewish oral tradition known as the Mishnah. Naming this version of the Talm ...

, Megillah 1:9: "Rebbi Jonathan from Bet Guvrrin said, 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." The later section of the Talmud, the

Gemara The Gemara (also transliterated Gemarah, or in Yiddish Gemore) is an essential component of the Talmud, comprising a collection of rabbinical analyses and commentaries on the Mishnah and presented in 63 books. The term is derived from the Aram ...

, 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 classical aggadah 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 a ''

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

'' among scholars and Jews traveling in foreign countries. After the 2nd century CE when the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

exiled most of the Jewish population of Jerusalem following the

, 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.

Medieval Hebrew

After the Talmud, various regional literary dialects of Medieval Hebrew evolved. The most important is

Tiberian Hebrew Tiberian Hebrew is the canonical pronunciation of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) committed to writing by Masoretic scholars living in the Jewish community of Tiberias in ancient Galilee under the Abbasid Caliphate. They wrote in the form of Tib ...

or Masoretic Hebrew, a local dialect of

Tiberias Tiberias ( ; , ; ) is a city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. A major Jewish center during Late Antiquity, it has been considered since the 16th century one of Judaism's Four Holy Cities, along with Jerusalem, Heb ...

that became the standard for vocalizing the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Masoretes The Masoretes (, lit. 'Masters of the Tradition') were groups of Jewish scribe- scholars who worked from around the end of the 5th through 10th centuries CE, based primarily in the Jewish centers of the Levant (e.g., Tiberias and Jerusalem) an ...

(from ''masoret'' meaning "tradition"), who added vowel points and grammar points to 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. The

Syriac alphabet The Syriac alphabet ( ) is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language since the 1st century. It is one of the Semitic languages, Semitic abjads descending from the Aramaic alphabet through the Palmyrene alphabet, and shares sim ...

, precursor to the

Arabic alphabet The Arabic alphabet, or the Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is a unicase, unicameral script written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most ...

, also developed vowel pointing systems around this time. The

Aleppo Codex The Aleppo Codex () is a medieval bound manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. The codex was written in the city of Tiberias in the tenth century CE (circa 920) under the rule of the Abbasid Caliphate, and was endorsed for its accuracy by Maimonides. ...

, 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. During the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, important work was done by grammarians in explaining the grammar and vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew; much of this was based on the work of the grammarians of

Classical Arabic Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic () is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notably in Umayyad Caliphate, Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate, Abbasid literary texts such as poetry, e ...

. Important Hebrew grammarians were , Jonah ibn Janah, Abraham ibn Ezra and later (in

Provence Provence is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which stretches from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the France–Italy border, Italian border to the east; it is bordered by the Mediterrane ...

), . A great deal of poetry was written, by poets such as ,

Solomon ibn Gabirol Solomon ibn Gabirol or Solomon ben Judah (, ; , ) was an 11th-century Jews, Jewish poet and Jewish philosopher, philosopher in the Neoplatonism, Neo-Platonic tradition in Al-Andalus. He published over a hundred poems, as well as works of biblical ...

, Judah ha-Levi, Moses ibn Ezra and Abraham ibn Ezra, in a "purified" Hebrew based on the work of these grammarians, and in Arabic quantitative or strophic meters. This literary Hebrew was later used by Italian Jewish poets. The need to express scientific and philosophical concepts from

Classical Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archa ...

and Medieval Arabic motivated 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 the family. (Original Jewish philosophical works were usually written in Arabic.) Another important influence was

Maimonides Moses ben Maimon (1138–1204), commonly known as Maimonides (, ) and also referred to by the Hebrew acronym Rambam (), was a Sephardic rabbi and Jewish philosophy, philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah schola ...

, who developed a simple style based on

for use in his law code, the . 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 as

's letters to his lieutenants, which were mostly in Aramaic, and Maimonides' writings, which were mostly in Arabic; 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. This meant not only that well-educated Jews in all parts of the world could correspond in a

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...

language, 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, Rabbi

Avraham Danzig Avraham ben Yehiel Michael Danzig (; 1748–1820) was a rabbi, ''posek'' (legal decisor) and Halakha#Codes of Jewish law, codifier, best known as the author of the works of halakha, Jewish law called ''Chayei Adam'' and ''Chochmat Adam''. He is so ...

wrote the ' in Hebrew, as opposed to

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

, as a guide to ''

Halacha ''Halakha'' ( ; , ), also transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Jewish religious laws that are derived from the Written and Oral Torah. ''Halakha'' is based on biblical commandments ('' mi ...

'' for the "''average'' 17-year-old" (Ibid. Introduction 1). Similarly, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan's purpose in writing the ' was 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 f Eastern Europeof a century ago, was fluent enough in this idiom to be able to follow the Mishna Berurah without any trouble."

Revival

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda at his desk in Jerusalem - c1912

Hebrew has been revived several times as a literary language, most significantly by the

Haskalah The ''Haskalah'' (; literally, "wisdom", "erudition" or "education"), often termed the Jewish Enlightenment, was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, with a certain influence on those in Wester ...

(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 a

pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified form of contact language that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn f ...

. Near the end of that century the Jewish activist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, owing to the ideology of the

national revival National revival or national awakening is a period of ethnic self-consciousness that often precedes a political movement for national liberation but that can take place at a time when independence is politically unrealistic. In the history of Euro ...

(, , later

Zionism Zionism is an Ethnic nationalism, ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914), Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the ...

), 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 the

Second Aliyah The Second Aliyah () was an aliyah (Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel) that took place between 1904 and 1914, during which approximately 35,000 Jews, mostly from Russia, with some from Yemen, immigrated into Ottoman Palestine. The Sec ...

, it replaced a score of languages spoken by Jews at that time. Those languages were Jewish dialects of local languages, including

Judaeo-Spanish Judaeo-Spanish or Judeo-Spanish (autonym , Hebrew script: ), also known as Ladino or Judezmo or Spaniolit, is a Romance language derived from Castilian Old Spanish. Originally spoken in Spain, and then after the Edict of Expulsion spreading ...

(also called "Judezmo" and "Ladino"),

Judeo-Arabic Judeo-Arabic (; ; ) sometimes referred as Sharh, are a group of different ethnolects within the branches of the Arabic language used by jewish communities. Although Jewish use of Arabic, which predates Islam, has been in some ways distinct ...

and Bukhori (Tajiki), or local languages spoken in the

Jewish diaspora The Jewish diaspora ( ), alternatively the dispersion ( ) or the exile ( ; ), consists of Jews who reside outside of the Land of Israel. Historically, it refers to the expansive scattering of the Israelites out of their homeland in the Southe ...

such as Russian, Persian and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

. 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 as

neologism In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

s from 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 declared

State of Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. 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 variously ''Israeli Hebrew'', ''Modern Israeli Hebrew'', ''Modern Hebrew'', ''New Hebrew'', ''Israeli Standard Hebrew'', ''Standard Hebrew'' and so on. Israeli Hebrew exhibits some features of Sephardic Hebrew from 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, (The Gatherer), was published by maskilim in

Königsberg Königsberg (; ; ; ; ; ; , ) is the historic Germany, German and Prussian name of the city now called Kaliningrad, Russia. The city was founded in 1255 on the site of the small Old Prussians, Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teuton ...

(today's

Kaliningrad Kaliningrad,. known as Königsberg; ; . until 1946, is the largest city and administrative centre of Kaliningrad Oblast, an Enclave and exclave, exclave of Russia between Lithuania and Poland ( west of the bulk of Russia), located on the Prego ...

) from 1783 onwards. In the mid-19th century, publications of several Eastern European Hebrew-language newspapers (e.g. , founded in

Ełk Ełk is a city in northeastern Poland with 61,677 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is the seat of Ełk County in the Warmian–Masurian Voivodeship. It lies on the shore of Ełk Lake, which was formed by a glacier, and is surrounded by extensiv ...

in 1856) multiplied. Prominent poets were

Hayim Nahman Bialik Hayim Nahman Bialik (; January 9, 1873 – July 4, 1934) was a Jewish poet who wrote primarily in Hebrew language, Hebrew and Yiddish. Bialik is considered a pioneer of modern Hebrew poetry, part of the vanguard of Jewish thinkers who gave voice ...

and

Shaul Tchernichovsky Shaul Tchernichovsky () or Saul Gutmanovich Tchernichovsky (; 20 August 1875 – 14 October 1943) was a Russian-born Hebrew poet. He is considered one of the great Hebrew poets, identified with nature poetry, and a poet greatly influenced by the ...

; there were also novels written in the language. The

revival of the Hebrew language The revival of the Hebrew language took place in Europe and the Levant region toward the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, through which the language's usage changed from purely the sacred language of Judaism to a spoken and wr ...

as a mother tongue was initiated in the late 19th century by the efforts of Ben-Yehuda. He joined the Jewish national movement and in 1881 immigrated to

Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...

, then a part of the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

. Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora "

shtetl or ( ; , ; Grammatical number#Overview, pl. ''shtetelekh'') is a Yiddish term for small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jews, Ashkenazi Jewish populations which Eastern European Jewry, existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. The t ...

" lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop tools for making the

literary Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, ...

and liturgical language into everyday

. However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been replaced in

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...

by different grammar and style, in the writings of people like Ahad Ha'am and others. His organizational efforts and involvement with the establishment of schools and the writing of textbooks pushed the

vernacular Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...

ization activity 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 the British Mandate of Palestine recognized 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 in

phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...

, was to take its place among the current languages of the nations. While many saw his work as fanciful or even

blasphemous Blasphemy refers to an insult that shows contempt, disrespect or lack of Reverence (emotion), reverence concerning a deity, an object considered sacred, or something considered Sanctity of life, inviolable. Some religions, especially Abrahamic o ...

(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 the

Academy of the Hebrew Language The Academy of the Hebrew Language (, ''ha-akademyah la-lashon ha-ivrit'') was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as the "supreme institution for scholarship on the Hebrew language in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem of Givat Ram cam ...

. 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 the Old Yishuv and a very few

Hasidic Hasidism () or Hasidic Judaism is a religious movement within Judaism that arose in the 18th century as a spiritual revival movement in contemporary Western Ukraine before spreading rapidly throughout Eastern Europe. Today, most of those aff ...

sects, most notably those under the auspices of

Satmar Satmar (; ) is a group in Hasidic Judaism founded in 1905 by Grand Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum (1887–1979), in the city of Szatmárnémeti (also called Szatmár in the 1890s), Kingdom of Hungary, Hungary (now Satu Mare in Romania). The group is a b ...

, 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 the

People's Commissariat for Education The People's Commissariat for Education (or Narkompros; , directly translated as the "People's Commissariat for Enlightenment") was the Soviet agency charged with the administration of public education and most other issues related to culture. In 1 ...

as early as 1919, as part of an overall agenda aiming to secularize education (the language itself did not cease to be studied at universities for historical and linguistic purposes). 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. 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, a policy of suppression of the teaching of Hebrew operated from the 1930s on. Later in the 1980s in the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, 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 Korostyshevsky and others responsible for a Hebrew learning network connecting many cities of the USSR.

Modern Hebrew

Standard Hebrew, as developed by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, was based on Mishnaic spelling and

Sephardi Hebrew Sephardi Hebrew (or Sepharadi Hebrew; , ) is the pronunciation system for Biblical Hebrew favored for liturgical use by Sephardi Jews. Its phonology was influenced by contact languages such as Spanish and Portuguese, Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino), Jud ...

pronunciation. However, the earliest speakers of Modern Hebrew had Yiddish as their native language and often introduced

calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...

s from Yiddish and

phono-semantic matching Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with phonetically and semantically similar words or roots f ...

s of international words. Despite using Sephardic Hebrew pronunciation as its primary basis, modern Israeli Hebrew has adapted to

Ashkenazi Hebrew Ashkenazi Hebrew (, ) is the pronunciation system for Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew favored for Jewish liturgical use and Torah study by Ashkenazi Jewish practice. Features As it is used parallel with Modern Hebrew, its phonological differences a ...

in some respects, mainly the following: * the replacement of pharyngeal articulation in the letters ''chet'' () and ''ayin'' () by most Hebrew speakers with uvular big>and glottal big> respectively, by most Hebrew speakers. * the conversion of ( ) from an

alveolar flap The voiced alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based pri ...

to a

voiced uvular fricative The voiced uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication, spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , an inverted small uppercase letter , or in broad t ...

uvular trill The voiced uvular trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a small capital version of the Latin letter r. This consonant is one of ...

, by most of the speakers, like in most varieties of standard German or Yiddish. ''see Guttural R'' * the pronunciation (by many speakers) of ''

tzere Tzere (also spelled ''Tsere'', ''Tzeirei'', ''Zere'', ''Zeire'', ''Ṣērê''; modern , , sometimes also written ; formerly ''ṣērê'') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign represented by two horizontally-aligned dots "◌ֵ" underneath a lette ...

'' <> as in some contexts (''sifréj'' and ''téjša'' instead of Sephardic ''sifré'' and ''tésha'') * the partial elimination of vocal ''

Shva Shva or, in Biblical Hebrew, shĕwa () is a Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew niqqud vowel sign written as two vertical dots () beneath a letter. It indicates either the phoneme (shva na', mobile shva) or the complete absence of a vowel (/Zero (linguist ...

'' <> (''zmán'' instead of Sephardic ''zĕman'') * in popular speech, penultimate stress in proper names (''Dvóra'' instead of ''Dĕvorá''; ''Yehúda'' instead of ''Yĕhudá'') and some other words * similarly in popular speech, penultimate stress in verb forms with a second person plural suffix (''katávtem'' "you wrote" instead of ''kĕtavtém''). The vocabulary of Israeli Hebrew is much larger than that of earlier periods. According to

Ghil'ad Zuckermann Ghil'ad Zuckermann (, ; ) is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann was awarded the Rubinlicht Prize (2023) "for his researc ...

: In Israel, Modern Hebrew is currently taught in institutions called Ulpanim (singular: Ulpan). There are government-owned, as well as private, Ulpanim offering online courses and face-to-face programs.

Current status

Modern Hebrew is the primary official language of the State of Israel. , there are about 9 million Hebrew speakers worldwide, of whom 7 million speak it fluently. Currently, 90% of Israeli Jews are proficient in Hebrew, and 70% are highly proficient. Some 60% of Israeli Arabs are also proficient in Hebrew, and 30% report having a higher proficiency in Hebrew than in Arabic. In total, about 53% of the Israeli population speaks Hebrew as a native language, while most of the rest speak it fluently. In 2013 Hebrew was the native language of 49% of Israelis over the age of 20, with Russian,

, French, English,

and Ladino being the native tongues of most of the rest. Some 26% of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and 12% of Arabs reported speaking Hebrew poorly or not at all. 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. The

of the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...

currently 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. The

Haifa Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...

municipality 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. In 2012, a

Knesset The Knesset ( , ) is the Unicameralism, unicameral legislature of Israel. The Knesset passes all laws, elects the President of Israel, president and Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister, approves the Cabinet of Israel, cabinet, and supe ...

bill 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, MK Akram Hasson, stated that the bill was proposed as a response to Hebrew "losing its prestige" and children incorporating more English words into their vocabulary. Hebrew is one of several languages for which the constitution of South Africa calls to be respected in their use for religious purposes. Also, Hebrew is an official national minority language in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, since 6 January 2005.

Hamas The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (the Arabic acronym from ), is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islam, Sunni Islamism, Islamist political organisation with a military wing, the Qassam Brigades. It has Gaza Strip under Hama ...

has made Hebrew a compulsory language taught in schools in the Gaza Strip.

Phonology

Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...

had a typical Semitic consonant inventory, with pharyngeal , a series of "emphatic" consonants (possibly

ejective In phonetics, ejective consonants are usually voiceless consonants that are pronounced with a glottalic egressive airstream. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated, voiced and tenuis consonants. Some l ...

, but this is debated), lateral fricative , and in its older stages also uvular . merged into in later Biblical Hebrew, and underwent allophonic spirantization to (known as

begadkefat Begadkefat (also begedkefet) is the phenomenon of lenition affecting the non-emphatic consonant, emphatic stop consonants of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic when they are preceded by a vowel and not gemination, geminated. The name is also given to si ...

). The earliest Biblical Hebrew vowel system contained the Proto-Semitic vowels as well as , but this system changed dramatically over time. By the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, had shifted to in the Jewish traditions, though for the Samaritans it merged with instead. The Tiberian reading tradition of the Middle Ages had the vowel system , though other Medieval reading traditions had fewer vowels. A number of reading traditions have been preserved in liturgical use. In Oriental ( Sephardi and Mizrahi) Jewish reading traditions, the emphatic consonants are realized as pharyngealized, while the

Ashkenazi Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that Ethnogenesis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium Common era, CE. They traditionally spe ...

(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 and

Torah reading Torah reading (; ') is a Jewish religious tradition that involves the public reading of a set of passages from a Torah scroll. The term often refers to the entire ceremony of removing the scroll (or scrolls) from the Torah ark, chanting the ap ...

), and show the shift of to . The

Samaritan Samaritans (; ; ; ), are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews and Israelites of the ancient Near East. They are indigenous to Samaria, a historical region of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah that ...

tradition has a complex vowel system that does not correspond closely to the Tiberian systems. Modern Hebrew pronunciation developed from a mixture of the different Jewish reading traditions, generally tending towards simplification. In line with

pronunciation, emphatic consonants have shifted to their ordinary counterparts, to , and are not present. Most Israelis today also merge with , do not have contrastive gemination, and pronounce as a uvular fricative or a voiced velar fricative rather than an alveolar trill, because of Ashkenazi Hebrew influences. The consonants and have become phonemic due to loan words, and has similarly been re-introduced.

Consonants

Notes: # Proto-Semitic was still pronounced as in Biblical Hebrew, but no letter was available in the Phoenician alphabet, so the letter had two pronunciations, representing both and . Later on, however, merged with , but the old spelling was largely retained, and the two pronunciations of were distinguished graphically in

as vs. < . # Biblical Hebrew as of the 3rd century BCE apparently still distinguished the phonemes versus and versus , as witnessed by transcriptions in the

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

. As in the case of , no letters were available to represent these sounds, and existing letters did double duty: for and for . 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 underwent

spirantization at a certain point, whereby the stop sounds were softened to the corresponding fricatives (written ''ḇ ḡ ḏ ḵ p̄ ṯ'') when occurring after a vowel and not geminated. This change probably happened after the original Old Aramaic phonemes disappeared in the 7th century BCE, and most likely occurred after the loss of Hebrew .According to the generally accepted view, it is unlikely that begadkefat spirantization occurred before the merger of and , or else and would have to be contrastive, which is cross-linguistically rare. However, Blau argues that it is possible that lenited and could coexist even if pronounced identically, since one would be recognized as an alternating allophone (as apparently is the case in Nestorian Syriac). See . It is known to have occurred in Hebrew by the 2nd century. After a certain point this alternation became contrastive in word-medial and final position (though bearing low functional load), but in word-initial position they remained allophonic. No text access via Google Books. In

Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew (, or ), also known as Israeli Hebrew or simply Hebrew, is the Standard language, standard form of the Hebrew language spoken today. It is the only surviving Canaanite language, as well as one of the List of languages by first w ...

, the distinction has a higher functional load due to the loss of gemination, although only the three fricatives are still preserved (the fricative is pronounced in modern Hebrew). (The others are pronounced like the corresponding stops, as Modern Hebrew pronunciation was based on the Sephardic pronunciation which lost the distinction)

Grammar

Hebrew grammar is partly analytic, expressing such forms as

dative In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a drink". In this exampl ...

ablative In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages. It is used to indicate motion away from something, make comparisons, and serve various o ...

and

accusative In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", " ...

using

preposition Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...

al particles rather than

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals) that corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a Nominal group (functional grammar), n ...

s. However, inflection plays a decisive role in the formation of verbs and nouns. For example, nouns have a

construct state In Afro-Asiatic languages, the first noun in a genitive phrase that consists of a possessed noun followed by a possessor noun often takes on a special morphological form, which is termed the construct state (Latin ''status constructus''). For ex ...

, called "''smikhut''", to denote the relationship of "belonging to": this is the converse of the

genitive case In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive ca ...

of more inflected languages. Words in ''smikhut'' are often combined with

hyphen The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (en dash , em dash and others), which are wider, or with t ...

s. 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"- enclitics are widely used to "decline" prepositions.

Morphology

Like all Semitic languages, the Hebrew language exhibits a pattern of stems consisting typically of "

triliteral The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or " radicals" (hence the term consonantal root). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in the formation of actual words by adding the vowel ...

", or 3-consonant consonantal 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 or

infix An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word or the core of a family of words). It contrasts with '' adfix,'' a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix. When marking text for ...

es. 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 of one-letter prefixes that are added to words for various purposes. These are called inseparable prepositions or "Letters of Use" (). Such items include: the definite article ''ha-'' () (= "the");

s ''be-'' () (= "in"), ''le-'' () (= "to"; a shortened version of the preposition ''el''), ''mi-'' () (= "from"; a shortened version of the preposition ''min''); conjunctions ''ve-'' () (= "and"), ''she-'' () (= "that"; a shortened version of the Biblical conjunction ''asher''), ''ke-'' () (= "as", "like"; a shortened version of the conjunction ''kmo''). 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 moving

, then the preposition takes the vowel (and the initial consonant may be weakened): colloquial ''be-kfar'' (= "in a village") corresponds to the more formal ''bi-khfar''. The definite article may be inserted between a preposition or a conjunction and the word it refers to, creating composite words like ''mé-ha-kfar'' (= "from the village"). The latter also demonstrates the change in the vowel of ''mi-''. With ''be'', ''le'' and ''ke'', the definite article is assimilated into the prefix, which then becomes ''ba'', ''la'' or ''ka''. Thus *''be-ha-matos'' becomes ''ba-matos'' (= "in the plane"). This does not happen to ''mé'' (the form of "min" or "mi-" used before the letter "he"), therefore ''mé-ha-matos'' is a valid form, which means "from the airplane". :''* indicates that the given example is grammatically non-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 early

had a VSO ordering, this gradually transitioned to a subject-verb-object ordering. Many Hebrew sentences have several correct orders of words. * In Hebrew, there is no

indefinite article In grammar, an article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the ...

. * Hebrew sentences do not have to include verbs; the copula in the present tense is omitted. For example, the sentence "I am here" ( ') has only two words; one for I () and one for here (). In the sentence "I am that person" ( '), the word for "am" corresponds to the word for "he" (). However, this is usually omitted. Thus, the sentence () 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 (''ha'im'', an interrogative form of 'if'), but it is largely omitted in informal speech. * In Hebrew there is a specific preposition ( ') for direct objects that would not have a preposition marker in English. The English phrase "he ate the cake" would in Hebrew be ' (literally, "He ate the cake"). The word , however, can be omitted, making ' ("He ate the cake"). Former Israeli Prime Minister

David Ben-Gurion David Ben-Gurion ( ; ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary List of national founders, national founder and first Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister of the State of Israel. As head of the Jewish Agency ...

was convinced that should never be used as it elongates the sentence without adding meaning. * In spoken Hebrew ‏‏ is also often contracted to ‏‏ , e.g. instead of (the ' indicates non-standard use). This phenomenon has also been found by researchers in the Bar Kokhba documents: , writing instead of , as well as and so on.

Writing system

Users of the language write Modern Hebrew from right to left using the

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet (, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is a unicase, unicameral abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably ...

– an "impure"

abjad An abjad ( or abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introd ...

, or consonant-only script, of 22 letters. The ancient

resembles those used for Canaanite and Phoenician. Modern scripts derive from the "square" letter form, known as ''Ashurit'' (Assyrian), which developed from the

Aramaic script Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written an ...

. A

cursive Hebrew Cursive Hebrew ( , "flowing Hebrew writing", or , "Hebrew handwriting", often called simply ', "writing") is a collective designation for several styles of handwriting the Hebrew alphabet. Modern Hebrew, especially in informal use in Israel, is h ...

script 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 as Rashi script. When necessary, vowels are indicated by

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

marks above or below the letter representing the syllabic onset, or by use of '' matres 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 (see

Hebrew cantillation Hebrew cantillation, trope, trop, or ''te'amim'' is the manner of chanting ritual readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue Jewish services, services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed ...

Liturgical use in Judaism

Hebrew has always been used as the language of prayer and study, and the following pronunciation systems are found.

, originating in Central and Eastern Europe, is still widely used in Ashkenazi Jewish religious services and studies in Israel and abroad, particularly in the

Haredi Haredi Judaism (, ) is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that is characterized by its strict interpretation of religious sources and its accepted (Jewish law) and traditions, in opposition to more accommodating values and practices. Its members are ...

and other Orthodox communities. It was influenced by

pronunciation.

is the traditional pronunciation of the

Spanish and Portuguese Jews Spanish and Portuguese Jews, also called Western Sephardim, Iberian Jews, or Peninsular Jews, are a distinctive sub-group of Sephardic Jews who are largely descended from Jews who lived as New Christians in the Iberian Peninsula during the fe ...

and

Sephardi Jews Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...

in the countries of the former

, with the exception of

Yemenite Hebrew Yemenite Hebrew (), also referred to as Temani Hebrew, is the pronunciation system for Hebrew language, Hebrew traditionally used by Yemenite Jews. Yemenite Hebrew has been studied by language scholars, many of whom believe it retains older phonet ...

. This pronunciation, in the form used by the Jerusalem Sephardic community, is the basis of the Hebrew phonology of Israeli native speakers. It was influenced by Ladino pronunciation. Mizrahi (Oriental) Hebrew is actually a collection of dialects spoken liturgically by Jews in various parts of the

Arab Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...

and

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

ic world. It was derived from the old

Arabic language Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

, and in some cases influenced by Sephardi Hebrew.

or ''Temanit'' differs 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 between tsere and

segol Segol (modern , ; formerly , ''səḡôl'') is a Hebrew niqqud vowel sign that is represented by three dots forming an upside down equilateral triangle "ֶ ". As such, it resembles an upside down therefore sign (a because sign) underneat ...

Notes

References

Sources

* * * * * *

External links

Official website
of the

Historical Dictionary Project of the Hebrew Language History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categ ...

Hebrew language
at the

National Library of Israel The National Library of Israel (NLI; ; ), formerly Jewish National and University Library (JNUL; ), is the library dedicated to collecting the cultural treasures of Israel and of Judaism, Jewish Cultural heritage, heritage. The library holds more ...

*
A Guide to Hebrew
at

BBC Online BBC Online, formerly known as BBCi, is the BBC's online service. It is a large network of websites including such high-profile sites as BBC News and BBC Sport, Sport, the on-demand video and radio services branded BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, t ...

Official website
of Morfix, a Hebrew-English dictionary
Hebrew language
at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

Hebrew Basic Course
by the

Foreign Service Institute The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the United States federal government's primary training institution for members of the U.S. foreign service community, preparing American diplomats as well as other professionals to advance U.S. foreign ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hebrew Language Canaanite languages Fusional languages Jewish languages Languages attested from the 10th century BC Languages of Israel Verb–subject–object languages Hebrews

Etymology

History

Oldest Hebrew inscriptions

Classical Hebrew

Biblical Hebrew