Hebrew language

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
Pronunciation	Modern: [ivˈʁit][note 1] Tiberian: [ʕivˈriθ] Biblical: [ʕibˈrit]
Native to	Israel
Region	Southern Levant
Extinct	Mishnaic 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]
Revival	Revived 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]
Language family	Afro-Asiatic Semitic West Central Northwest Canaanite South Hebrew
Early forms	Biblical Hebrew Mishnaic Hebrew Medieval Hebrew
Standard forms	Modern Samaritan
Dialects	Israelian †
Writing system	Hebrew alphabet Hebrew Braille Paleo-Hebrew alphabet (Archaic Biblical Hebrew) Imperial Aramaic script (Late Biblical Hebrew) Samaritan script (Samaritan Biblical Hebrew)
Signed forms	Signed Hebrew (oral Hebrew accompanied by sign)[5]
Official status
Official language in	Israel (as Modern Hebrew)[6]
Recognised minority language in	Poland[7] South Africa[8] Turkey[14]
Regulated by	Academy of the Hebrew Language האקדמיה ללשון העברית (ha-akademyah la-lashon ha-ʿivrit)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	he
ISO 639-2	heb
ISO 639-3	Variously: heb – Modern Hebrew hbo – Classical Hebrew (liturgical) smp – Samaritan Hebrew (liturgical) obm – Moabite (extinct) xdm – Edomite (extinct)
Glottolog	hebr1246
Linguasphere	12-AAB-a
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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. Modern Hebrew is a bit different than biblical Hebrew, with some loanwords from different languages, mainly aramic. Modern Hebrew speakers can read the bible

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

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

"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

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

Related pages

• Phoenician alphabet