Wikipedia

Hebrew language

Northwest Semitic language
(Redirected from Hebrew)

The Hebrew language, also referred to as the Hebraic language, is a Northwest Semitic 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][note 1]
Tiberian: [ʕivˈriθ]
Biblical: [ʕibˈrit]
Native toIsrael
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[1][2][3]
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)[4]
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)[5]
Official status
Official language in
Israel (as Modern Hebrew)[6]
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)

Hebrew was spoken by Israelites a long time ago, during the time of the Bible. After Judah was conquered by Babylonia, the Jews were taken captive (prisoner) to Babylon and started speaking Aramaic. Hebrew was no longer used much in daily life, but it was still known by Jews who studied halakha.

In the 20th century, many Jews decided to make Hebrew into a spoken language again. It became the language of the new country of Israel in 1948. People in Israel came from many places and decided to learn Hebrew, the language of their common ancestors, so that they could all speak one language. However, Modern Hebrew is quite different from Biblical Hebrew, with a simpler grammar and many loanwords from other languages, especially English.

As of 2021, Hebrew has been the only dead language that had been made into a living language again.[15]

The Hebrew Bible was originally written in Biblical Hebrew.

Grammar

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Hebrew is a Semitic language, like Arabic, a similar language. Hebrew words are made by combining a root with a pattern. In Israeli Hebrew, some words are translated from European languages like English, French, German, and Russian. Many words from the Old Testament were given new meanings in Israeli Hebrew.[16] People learning Hebrew need to study the grammar first so that they can read correctly without vowels.

In Israeli Hebrew, there is no verb "to be" in the present tense only in the future and the past tenses. In Biblical Hebrew, there are no tenses but only two aspects: imperfect and perfect. The imperfect is something like the future and the present tenses. The perfect is something like the past tense.

Mishnaic Hebrew was spoken as well as Judeo-Aramaic at the time of Jesus and at the time of the Bar-Kokhba revolt (2nd century AD) until the Byzantine Empire of Justinian (6th century AD).

The Hebrew alphabet has been adapted to write Yiddish, another Jewish language. However, Yiddish is different from Hebrew because Yiddish comes from a mix of German, Hebrew, and other languages.

Alphabet

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"Israel" written in the Hebrew alphabet.

The Hebrew [en] alphabet, also known as the Hebrew abjad, has 22 letters.[17] Five of them change when they are at the end of a word. Hebrew is read and written from right to left.[18] The first three letters, aleph, beth and gimel, are also used in mathematics in the context of transfinite numbers.[19]

The Hebrew alphabet is an abjad and so only the consonants are written, and readers must supply the vowels. Since that can be difficult, the vowels can be marked as dots called niqqud. In Modern Hebrew, some letters can denote vowels, which are called matres lectionis (mothers of the reading) since they greatly help reading. Vav can make the 'oo' sound (/u/ in IPA) like in food. Yod can make the 'ee' sound (/i/ in IPA) like in feed.

Aleph Bet Gimel Dalet He Vav Zayin Het Tet Yod Kaph
א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ
ך
Lamed Mem Nun Samekh Ayin Pe Tsadi Qoph Resh Shin Tav
ל מ נ ס ע פ צ ק ר ש ת
ם ן ף ץ

Notes

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

References

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Hebrew edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
The English Wikibook wikibooks: has more information on:
  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.
  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. ↑ [9][10][11][12][13]
  15. ↑ "Hebrew | Foreign Languages | Monroe Community College". www.monroecc.edu. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  16. ↑ Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003). Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. England: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781403917232.
  17. ↑ "Hebrew alphabet | writing system". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-10-02.
  18. ↑ "The Hebrew Alphabet (Aleph-Bet)". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2020-10-02.
  19. ↑ "Greek/Hebrew/Latin-based Symbols in Mathematics". Math Vault. 2020-03-20. Retrieved 2020-10-02.
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