Hebrew redirects here. For other uses, see Hebrew (disambiguation).

Hebrew ( , Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family

spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Jewish communities around the
world. In Israel, it is the de facto language of the state and the people, as well as being
one of the two official languages (together with Arabic), and it is spoken by a majority of
the population.
The core of the Tanach (the Hebrew Bible )"is written in Classical Hebrew, and
much of its present form is specifically the dialect of Biblical Hebrew that scholars
believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, near the Babylonian exile. For this
reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Lshn Ha-Qdesh ( ) ,
"The Holy Tongue", since ancient times.
Most linguists agree that after the 6th century BCE when the Neo-Babylonian Empire
destroyed Jerusalem and exiled its population to Babylon and Cyrus The Great, the
Emperor of Persia gave them their freedom to return, the Biblical Hebrew dialect
prevalent in the Bible came to be replaced in daily use by new dialects of Hebrew and a
local version of Aramaic. After the 2nd century CE when the Roman Empire exiled the
Jewish population of Jerusalem and parts of the Bar Kokhba State, Hebrew gradually
ceased to be a spoken language, but remained a major literary language. Letters,
contracts, commerce, science, philosophy, medicine, poetry, and laws were written in
Hebrew, which adapted by borrowing and inventing terms.
Hebrew, long extinct outside of Jewish liturgical and scholarly purposes, was revived as a
literary and narrative language by the Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement of the mid19th century. Near the end of that century the Jewish linguist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, owing
to the ideology of Zionism, began reviving Hebrew as a modern spoken and written
language. Eventually it replaced a score of languages spoken by Jews at that time, such as
Arabic, Ladino (also called Judezmo), Yiddish, Russian, and other languages of the
Jewish diaspora.
Because of its large disuse for centuries, Hebrew lacked many modern words. Several
were adapted as neologisms from the Hebrew Bible or borrowed from Yiddish and other
languages by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. 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.

Contents
[hide]

1 History
o 1.1 Origins of Hebrew
o 1.2 Hebrew as a distinct Canaanite dialect
o 1.3 Classical Hebrew

1.4 Amoraic Hebrew

1.5 Medieval Hebrew
1.6 Liturgical use of Hebrew
2 Modern Hebrew
o 2.1 Development of Modern Hebrew
o 2.2 Reactions to Modern Hebrew
o 2.3 Hebrew language in the USSR
o 2.4 Modern Israeli Hebrew
2.4.1 Characterization
2.4.2 Regional Hebrew dialects
3 Coexistence with Aramaic
o 3.1 Aramaic as the international language of the Mideast
o 3.2 Aramaic displacing Hebrew as a spoken language
o 3.3 Jewish dialects of Aramaic
4 Other languages coexisting with Hebrew
5 Phonology
o 5.1 Vowels
o 5.2 Consonants
5.2.1 Historical sound changes
6 Grammar
7 Writing system
o 7.1 Romanization
8 See also
9 Notes
10 Bibliography
11 External links
o 11.1 General
o 11.2 Dictionaries
o 11.3 Grammar
o 11.4 History of the Hebrew Language
o
o
o

11.5 Complete Texts in Hebrew

[edit] History
As a language, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. Hebrew (Israel)
and Moabite (Jordan) are Southern Canaanite while Phoenician (Lebanon) is Northern
Canaanite. Canaanite is closely related to Aramaic and to a lesser extent South-Central
Arabic. Whereas other Canaanite languages and dialects have become extinct, Hebrew
survived. Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in Israel from the 10th century BC
until just before the Byzantine Period in the 3rd or 4th century AD. (See below, Aramaic
displacing Hebrew as a spoken language.) Afterward Hebrew continued as a literary
language until the Modern Era when it was revived as a spoken language in the 19th
century.[1]

Map of larger Hebrew speaking communities around the World

[edit] Origins of Hebrew

Hebrew is a Semitic language, and as such a member of the larger Afro-Asiatic phylum.
Within Semitic, the Northwest Semitic languages formed around the 3rd millennium BC,
grouped with the Arabic languages as Central Semitic. The Canaanite languages are a
group within Northwest Semitic, emerging in the 2nd millennium BC in the Levant,
gradually separating from Aramaic and Ugaritic.
Within the Canaanite group, Hebrew belongs to the sub-group also containing Edomite,
Ammonite and Moabite: see Hebrew languages. Another Canaanite sub-group contains
Phoenician and its descendant Punic.

[edit] Hebrew as a distinct Canaanite dialect

The first written evidence of distinctive Hebrew, the Gezer calendar, dates back to the
10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, the traditional time of the
reign of David and Solomon. Classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents
a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar (named after the
city in whose proximity it was found) is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the
Phoenician one that through the Greeks and Etruscans later became the Roman script.
The Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to
imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it.

The Shebna lintel, from the tomb of a royal steward found in Siloam, dates to the 7th
century BC.
Numerous older tablets have been found in the region with similar scripts written in other
Semitic languages, for example Protosinaitic. It is believed that the original shapes of the
script go back to the hieroglyphs of the Egyptian writing, though the phonetic values are
instead inspired by the acrophonic principle. The common ancestor of Hebrew and
Phoenician is called Canaanite, and was the first to use a Semitic alphabet distinct from
Egyptian. One ancient document is the famous Moabite Stone written in the Moabite
dialect; the Siloam Inscription, found near Jerusalem, is an early example of Hebrew.
Less ancient samples of Archaic Hebrew include the ostraka found near Lachish which
describe events preceding the final capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the
Babylonian captivity of 586 BC.

[edit] Classical Hebrew

In its widest sense, Classical Hebrew means the spoken language of ancient Israel
flourishing between the 10th century BC and the turn of the 4th century AD.[2] It
comprises several evolving and overlapping dialects. The phases of Classical Hebrew are
often named after important literary works associated with them.

Archaic Biblical Hebrew from the 10th to the 6th century BCE, corresponding to
the Monarchic Period until the Babylonian Exile and represented by certain texts
in the Hebrew Bible (Tanach), notably the Song of Moses (Exodus 15) and the
Song of Deborah (Judges 5). Also called Old Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew.
Historically, it used a form of the Canaanite script.
Biblical Hebrew around the 6th century BC, corresponding to the Babylonian
Exile and represented by the bulk of the Hebrew Bible that attains much of its
present form around this time, give-or-take. Also called Classical Biblical Hebrew
(or Classical Hebrew in the narrowest sense). It adopted the Imperial Aramaic
script.
Late Biblical Hebrew from the 6th to the 4th century BC, that corresponds to the
Persian Period and is represented by certain texts in the Hebrew Bible, notably the
books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century AD,
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 BC evolved into the Hebrew square script of the later scrolls in the 1st
century AD, still in use today.
Mishnaic Hebrew 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 and Tosefta within the Talmud and by the Dead Sea
Scrolls, notably the Bar Kokhba Letters and the Copper Scroll. Also called
Tannaitic Hebrew or Early Rabbinic Hebrew.

Sometimes the above phases of spoken Classical Hebrew are simplified into "Biblical
Hebrew" (including several dialects from the tenth century BCE to 2nd century BC and
extant in certain Dead Sea Scrolls) and "Mishnaic Hebrew" (including several dialects
from the 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD and extant in certain other Dead Sea
Scrolls).[3] 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.[4] By the start of the
Byzantine Period in the 4th century CE, Classical Hebrew ceases as a spoken language,
roughly a century after the publication of the Mishnah, apparently declining since the
aftermath of the catastrophic Bar Kokhba War around 135 AD.

[edit] Amoraic Hebrew

The term generally refers to the Hebrew dialects found in the Talmud , excepting
quotations pulled from the Hebrew Bible. The dialects organize into Mishnaic Hebrew
(also called Tannaitic Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or Mishnaic Hebrew I), which
was a spoken language, and Amoraic Hebrew (also called Late Rabbinic Hebrew or
Mishnaic Hebrew II), which was a literary language.
The earlier section of the Talmud is the Mishnah that was published around 200
AD and was written in the earlier Mishnaic dialect. The Talmud also adds the Tosefta
being other texts from this dialect. The dialect is also found in certain Dead
Sea Scrolls. Mishnaic Hebrew is considered one of the dialects of Classical Hebrew that
functioned as a living language in the land of Israel.
About a century after the publication of the Mishnah, Mishnaic Hebrew fell into disuse as
a spoken language. The later section of the Talmud, the Gemara , generally
comments on the Mishnah and Tosefta in Aramaic. Nevertheless, Hebrew survived as a
liturgical and literary language in the form of later Amoraic Hebrew, which sometimes
occurs in the text of the Gemara.

[edit] Medieval Hebrew

Main article: Medieval Hebrew

Aleppo Codex: 10th century Hebrew Bible with Masoretic pointing

After the Talmud, various regional literary dialects of Medieval Hebrew evolved. The
most important is Tiberian Hebrew or Masoretic Hebrew, a local dialect of Tiberias in
Galilee that became the standard for vocalizing the Hebrew Bible and thus still influences

all other regional dialects of Hebrew. This Tiberian Hebrew from the 7th to 10th century
AD is sometimes called "Biblical Hebrew" because it is used to pronounce the Hebrew
Bible; however properly it should be distinguished from the historical Biblical Hebrew of
the 6th century BC, whose original pronunciation must be reconstructed.
Tiberian Hebrew incorporates the remarkable scholarship of the Masoretes (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 script,
precursor to the Arabic script, also developed vowel pointing systems around this time.
The Aleppo Codex, a Hebrew Bible with the Masoretic pointing, was written in the 10th
century likely in Tiberias and survives to this day. It is perhaps the most important
Hebrew manuscript in existence.
In the Golden age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula 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. Important Hebrew
grammarians were Judah ben David Hayyuj and Jonah ibn Janah. A great deal of poetry
was written, by poets such as Dunash ben Labrat, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Judah ha-Levi
and the two Ibn Ezras, in a "purified" Hebrew based on the work of these grammarians,
and in Arabic quantitative metres. This literary Hebrew was later used by Italian Jewish
poets.
The need to express scientific and philosophical concepts from Classical Greek 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
Ibn Tibbon family. (Original Jewish philosophical works were usually written in Arabic.)
Another important influence was Maimonides, who developed a simple style based on
Mishnaic Hebrew for use in his law code, the Mishneh Torah. Subsequent rabbinic
literature is written in a blend between this style and the Aramaized Rabbinic Hebrew of
the Talmud.
Hebrew was also used as a language of communication among Jews from different
countries, particularly for the purpose of international trade.

[edit] Liturgical use of Hebrew

Hebrew has always been used as the language of prayer and study, and the following
pronunciation systems are found.
Ashkenazi Hebrew, originating in Central and Eastern Europe, is still widely used in
Ashkenazi Jewish religious services and studies in Israel and abroad, particularly in the
Haredi and other Orthodox communities. It was influenced by the Yiddish language.

Sephardi Hebrew is the traditional pronunciation of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews as
well as Sephardi Jews in the countries of the former Ottoman Empire. 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 the Ladino language.
Mizrahi (Oriental) Hebrew is actually a collection of dialects spoken liturgically by Jews
in various parts of the Arab and Islamic world. It was possibly influenced by the Aramaic
and Arabic languages, and in some cases by Sephardi Hebrew, although some linguists
maintain that it is the direct heir of Biblical Hebrew and thus represents the true dialect of
Hebrew. The same claim is sometimes made for Yemenite Hebrew or Temanit, which
differs from other Mizrahi dialects by having a radically different vowel system.
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, though some
traditionalist Israelis are bi-dialectal.
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.

[edit] Modern Hebrew

[edit] Development of Modern Hebrew
In the Modern Period, from the 19th century onward, the literary Hebrew tradition as
pronounced in Jerusalem 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 many features of
Sephardic Hebrew from its local Jerusalemite tradition but adapts it with numerous
neologisms, borrows (often technical) terms from European languages and adopted (often
colloquial) terms from Palestinian Arabic.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
The literary and narrative use of Hebrew was revived beginning with the Haskalah
(Enlightenment) movement of the mid-19th century, with the publication of several
Eastern European Hebrew-language newspapers (e.g. HaMagid, founded in Lyck,

Prussia, in 1856). Prominent poets were Chaim Nachman Bialik and Shaul
Tchernichovsky; there were also novels written in the language.
The revival of Hebrew language as a mother tongue was initiated by the efforts of Eliezer
Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922) ( ) . He joined the Jewish national
movement and in 1881 immigrated to Palestine, then a part of the Ottoman Empire.
Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora "shtetl"
lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop tools for making the literary and liturgical
language into everyday spoken language.
However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been replaced in Eastern Europe
by different grammar and style, in the writings of people like Achad Ha-Am and others.
His organizational efforts and involvement with the establishment of schools and the
writing of textbooks pushed the vernacularization 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 syntax and form, especially in phonology[5], was to take its place among the
current languages of the nations.

[edit] Reactions to Modern Hebrew

While many saw his work as fanciful or even blasphemous[6] (due to the fact that Hebrew
was the holy language of the Torah and therefore some thought that it should not be used
to discuss common everyday matters), many soon understood the need for a common
language amongst Jews of the Palestine Mandate who at the turn of the 20th century were
arriving in large numbers from diverse countries and speaking different languages. It has
been said that Hebrew unified the new immigrants coming to Mandate Palestine, creating
a common language and "culture."[citation needed] A Committee of the Hebrew Language was
established. Later it became the Academy of the Hebrew Language, an organization that
exists today. The results of his and the Committee's work were published in a dictionary
(The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew). 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. However, members of the Yishuv HaYoshon, the Eidah Chareidis, as well as
some Chasidic sects, most notably those under the auspices of Satmar refused to speak
Hebrew, and continue to this day to speak only Yiddish[7]

[edit] Hebrew language in the USSR

Main articles: History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union and Yevsektsiya

The Soviet authorities considered the use of Hebrew "reactionary" since it was associated
with both Judaism and Zionism, and the teaching of Hebrew at primary and secondary
schools was officially banned by the Narkompros (Commissariat of Education) as early
as 1919, as part of an overall agenda aiming to secularize education (the language itself
didn't cease to be studied at universities for historical and linguistic purposes[8]). 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.[9] 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 in the West,[10] teachers and students who attempted to study the
Hebrew language were pilloried and sentenced for "counter revolutionary" and later for
"anti-Soviet" activities.[citation needed]

[edit] Modern Israeli Hebrew

Standard Hebrew, as developed by Eliezer Ben Yehuda, was based on Mishnaic spelling
and Sephardi Hebrew pronunciation. However, the earliest speakers of Modern Hebrew
had Yiddish as their native tongue and often brought into Hebrew idioms and literal
translations from Yiddish. Similarly, the language as spoken in Israel has adapted to
Ashkenazi Hebrew phonology in the following respects:

the elimination of pharyngeal articulation in the letters chet and ayin

the conversion of /r/ from an alveolar flap to a voiced uvular fricative or trill (see
Guttural R)
the pronunciation (by many speakers) of tzere as [e] in some contexts (sifrey and
teysha instead of Sephardic sifr and tsha' )
the elimination of vocal sheva (zman instead of Sephardic zman)
some of the letter names (yud and kuf instead of Sephardic yod and qof)
in popular speech, penultimate stress in proper names (Dvra instead of Dvor;
Yehda instead of Yhud).

[edit] Characterization
Scholars differ on the characterization of the resulting language. Most regard it as a
genuine continuation of Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew, while conceding that it has
acquired some European vocabulary and syntactical features, in much the same way as
Modern Standard Arabic (or even more so, dialects such as Moroccan Arabic). Two
dissenting views are as follows.

Wexler[11] claims that modern Hebrew is not a Semitic language at all, but a
dialect of "Judaeo-Sorbian". On his argument, the underlying structure of the
language is Slavic, "re-lexified" to absorb much of the vocabulary and inflexional
system of Hebrew, in much the same way as a creole.
Ghilad Zuckermann[12] compromises between Wexler and the majority view:
"Israeli" is a separate language from Hebrew, and has a basically European

syntax, but should be regarded as a hybrid between the Hebrew and European
models.
Neither view has gained significant acceptance among mainstream linguists, though few
would dispute that Hebrew has acquired some European features as a result of having
been learned by immigrants as a second language at a crucial formative stage. The
identity of the European substrate/adstrate has varied: in the time of the Mandate and the
early State, the principal contributors were Yiddish and modern standard German[citation
needed]
, while today it is American English.
[edit] Regional Hebrew dialects
According to Ethnologue, the currently spoken dialects of Hebrew are "Standard Hebrew
(General Israeli, Europeanized Hebrew)" and "Oriental Hebrew (Arabized Hebrew,
Yemenite Hebrew)". These refer to two varieties used for actual communication by native
speakers in Israel; they differ mainly in pronunciation, and hardly in any other way.
(Incidentally, the term "Arabized" is misleading, in that it implies that it differs from
"General Israeli" mainly because it changed under the influence of Arabic. In fact,
"Oriental Hebrew" retains features of ancient Hebrew that were shared by Arabic but lost
in non-Arabic-speaking parts of the world.)[citation needed]
Immigrants to Israel are encouraged to adopt "Standard Hebrew" as their daily language.
Phonologically, this "dialect" may most accurately be described as an amalgam of
pronunciations preserving Sephardic vowel sounds and some Ashkenazic consonant
sounds with Yiddish-style influence, its recurring feature being simplification of
differences among a wide array of pronunciations. This simplifying tendency also
accounts for the collapse of the Ashkenazic [t] and [s] allophones of ( /t/) into the single
phone [t]. Most Sephardic and Mizrahi dialects share this feature, though some (such as
those of Iraq and Yemen) differentiate between these two pronunciations as /t/ and //.
Within Israel, however, the pronunciation of Hebrew more often reflects the diasporic
origin of the individual speaker, rather than the specific recommendations of the
Academy. For this reason, over half the population pronounces as [], (a uvular trill, as
in Yiddish and some varieties of German) or as [] (a uvular fricative, as in French or
many varieties of German), rather than as [r], an alveolar trill, as in Spanish. The
pronunciation of this phoneme is often used among Israelis as a shibboleth, or
determinant when ascertaining the national origin of perceived foreigners.
There are mixed views on the status of the two dialects. On the one hand, prominent
Israelis of Sephardic or Oriental origin are admired for the purity of their speech and
Yemenite Jews are often employed as newsreaders. On the other hand, the speech of
middle-class Ashkenazim is regarded as having a certain Central European sophistication,
and many speakers of Mizrahi origin have moved nearer to this version of Standard
Hebrew, in some cases even adopting the uvular resh.
It was formerly the case that the inhabitants of the north of Israel pronounced bet rafe
(bet without dagesh) as /b/ in accordance with the conservative Sephardic pronunciation.

This was regarded as rustic and has since disappeared. It is still said that one can tell an
inhabitant of Jerusalem by the pronunciation of the word for two hundred as "ma'atayim"
(as distinct from "matayim", as heard elsewhere in the country). Today, Israeli Hebrew is
virtually uniform, the only noticeable variation being along ethnic lines. It is widely felt
that these differences, too, have been disappearing among the younger generation.

[edit] Coexistence with Aramaic

Main article: Judeo-Aramaic language
Aramaic is a North-West Semitic language, like Canaanite. Its name derives either from
"Aram Naharayim" in Upper Mesopotamia or from "Aram", an ancient name for Syria.
Various dialects of Aramaic coevolved with Hebrew throughout much of its history.

[edit] Aramaic as the international language of the Mideast

The language of the Neo-Babylonian Empire was a dialect of Aramaic. The Persian
Empire that captured Babylonia a few decades later adopted Imperial Aramaic as the
official international language of the Persian Empire. The Israelite population, who had
been exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem and its surrounding region of Judah, were
allowed to return to Jerusalem to establish a Persian province, usually called Judea. Thus
Aramaic became the administrative language for Judea when dealing with the rest of
Persian Empire.
The Aramaic script also evolved from the Canaanite script, but they diverged
significantly. By the 1st century CE, the Aramaic script developed into the distinctive
Hebrew square script (also known as Assyrian Script, Ktav Ashuri), extant in the Dead
Sea Scrolls and similar to the script still in use today.

[edit] Aramaic displacing Hebrew as a spoken language

By the early half of the 20th century, modern scholars reached a nearly unanimous
opinion that Aramaic became a spoken language in the land of Israel by the start of
Israel's Hellenistic Period in the 4th century BCE, and thus Hebrew ceased to function as
a spoken language around the same time. However, during the latter half of the 20th
century, accumulating archaeological evidence and especially linguistic analysis of the
Dead Sea Scrolls has qualified the previous consensus. Alongside Aramaic, Hebrew also
flourished as a living spoken language. Hebrew flourished until near the end of the
Roman Period, when it continued on as a literary language by the Byzantine Period in 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,
Aramaic functioned as the international language with the rest of the Mideast, and
eventually Greek functioned as another international language with the eastern areas of

the Roman Empire. Communities of Jews (and non-Jews) are known, who immigrated to
Judea from these other lands and continued to speak Aramaic or Greek.
Although the survival of Hebrew as a spoken language until the Byzantine Period is wellknown among Hebrew linguists[citation needed], there remains a lag in awareness among some
historians who do not necessarily keep up-to-speed with linguistic research and rely on
outdated scholarship. Nevertheless, current understandings of the vigor of Hebrew are
slowly but surely making their way through the academic literature. The Hebrew of the
Dead Sea Scrolls distinguishes the Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew from the various dialects of
Biblical Hebrew out of which it evolved: "This book presents the specific features of
DSS Hebrew, emphasizing deviations from classical BH."[13] 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 BC", now says, in 1997 in its third
edition, that Hebrew "continued to be used as a spoken and written language in the New
Testament period".[14] An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew says, "It is generally
believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically the Copper Scroll and also the Bar
Kokhba letters, have furnished clear evidence of the popular character of MH [Mishnaic
Hebrew]."[15] And so on.[16] Israeli scholars now tend to take it for granted that Hebrew as
a spoken language is a feature of Judea's Roman Period.

[edit] Jewish dialects of Aramaic

The international language of Aramaic radiated into various regional dialects. In and
around Judea, various dialects of Old Western Aramaic emerged, including the Jewish
dialect of Old Judean Aramaic during the Roman Period. Josephus Flavius initially wrote
and published his book Jewish War in Old Judean Aramaic but later translated it into
Koine Greek to publish it for the Roman imperial court. Unfortunately Josephus's
Aramaic version does not survive.
Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Jews
gradually began to disperse from Jerusalem to foreign countries, especially after the Bar
Kokhba War in 135 CE when the Romans turned Jerusalem into a pagan city named
Aelia Capitolina.
After the Bar Kokhba War in the 2nd century CE, the Jewish Palestinian Aramaic dialect
emerged from obscurity out of the vicinity of Galilee to form one of the main dialects in
the Western branch of Middle Aramaic. The Jerusalem Talmud (by the 5th century) used
this Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, as did the Midrash Rabba (6th to 12th century). This
dialect probably influenced the pronunciation of the 8th-century Tiberian Hebrew that
vocalizes the Hebrew Bible.
Meanwhile over in Babylon, the Babylonian Talmud (by the 7th century) used Jewish
Babylonian Aramaic, a Jewish dialect in the Eastern branch of Middle Aramaic. For
centuries Jewish Babylonian remained the spoken language of Mesopotamian Jews and
the Lishana Deni. In the area of Kurdistan, there is a modern Aramaic dialect descending

from it that is still spoken by a few thousand Jews (and non-Jews), though it has largely
given way to Arabic.
Hebrew continues to strongly influence all these various Jewish dialects of Aramaic.

[edit] Other languages coexisting with Hebrew

Main article: Jewish languages
Besides Jewish dialects of Aramaic, other languages are highly influenced by Hebrew,
such as Yiddish, Ladino, Karaim and Judeo-Arabic. Although none is completely derived
from Hebrew, they all make extensive use of Hebrew loanwords.
The revival of Hebrew is often cited by proponents of international auxiliary languages as
the best proof that languages long dead, with small communities, or modified or created
artificially can become living languages used by a large number of people.

[edit] Phonology
Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for a
pronunciation key.

Main article: Hebrew phonology

Hebrew has two kinds of stress: on the last syllable (milra) and on the penultimate
syllable (the one preceding the last, milel). The former is more frequent. Specific rules
connect the location of the stress with the length of the vowels in the last syllable.
However, due to the fact that Israeli Hebrew does not distinguish between long and short
vowels, these rules are not evident in everyday speech. They usually cannot be inferred
from written text either, since usually vowels are not marked. The rules that specify the
vowel length are different for verbs and nouns, which influences the stress; thus the
milel-stressed khel (="food") and milra-stressed okhl (="eats", masculine) differ only
in the length of the vowels (and are written identically if vowels are not marked). Little
ambiguity exists, however, due to nouns and verbs having incompatible roles in normal
sentences. This is, however, also true in English, in, for example, the English word
"conduct," in its nominal and verbal forms.

[edit] Vowels

The Hebrew word for vowels is tnu'ot. The marks for these vowels are called Nikud.
Israeli Hebrew has 6 vowel phonemes:

/a/ (as in "spa") - The vowels kamats () and patakh ()

/e/ (as in "caf") - The vowels segol () and tsere ()
/i/ (as in "ski") - The vowel khirik ()
/o/ (as in "go") - The vowel kholam ()
/u/ (as in "flu") - The vowels shuruk ( )and kubuts ()
// (as in "about") - The vowel shva na' ()

Many Israeli speakers have merged // into /e/, reducing the vowel phonemes to 5.
In Biblical Hebrew, each vowel had three forms: short, long and interrupted (khataf).
However, there is no audible distinction between the three in modern Israeli Hebrew,
except that tsere is often pronounced [e] as in Ashkenazi Hebrew.
Hebrew is written with a special vowel called "schwa". Depending on its context in a
word, it can be pronounced in three ways, called resting ("nakh"), moving ("na'"), and
floating ("merahef") . The resting schwa is silent, while the moving schwa is
pronounced /e/ in Israeli Hebrew (though it was traditionally //) . The floating schwa can
be pronounced either as a moving schwa or a resting schwa.
One-letter words and particles are always attached to the following word. Such items
include: the definite article ha (="the"); prepositions be (="in"), mi (="from"), le (="to");
conjunctions she (="that"), ke (="as", "like"), ve (="and"). The vowel that follows the
letter thus attached depends in general on the beginning of the next word and the
presence of a definite article which may be swallowed by the one-letter word.
The rules for the prepositions are complicated and vary with the formality of speech. In
most cases they are followed by a moving schwa, and for that reason they are pronounced
as be, me and le. In more formal speech, if a preposition is put before a word which
begins with a moving shva, then the preposition takes the vowel /i/ (and the initial
consonant is weakened), but in colloquial speech these changes do not occur. For
example, colloquial be-kfar (="in a village") becomes bi-khfar. If l or b are followed by
the definite article ha, their vowel changes to /a/. Thus *be-ha-matos becomes ba-matos

(="in the plane"). However it does not happen to m, therefore me-ha-matos is a valid
form, which means "from the plane".
* indicates that the given example is not grammatically correct

[edit] Consonants
The Hebrew word for consonants is itsurim ().

Bilabial Labiodental Alveolar

Stops

Fricatives

Laterals

Approximants

k g

Affricates

Nasals

PostPalatal Velar Uvular Glottal

alveolar[17]

The pairs /b, v/, /k, x/ and /p, f/ have historically been allophonic. In Modern Hebrew,
however, all six sounds are phonemic, due to mergers involving formerly distinct sounds
(/v/ merging with /w/, /k/ merging with /q/, /x/ merging with //), loss of consonant
gemination (which formerly distinguished the stop members of the pairs from the
fricatives when intervocalic), and the introduction of syllable-initial /f/ through foreign
borrowings.

was once pronounced as a voiced pharyngeal fricative. Most modern Ashkenazi Jews
do not differentiate between and ;however, Mizrahi Jews and Arabs pronounce these
phonemes. Georgian Jews pronounce it as a glottalized q. Western European Sephardim
and Dutch Ashkenazim traditionally pronounce it [] (like ng in sing) a pronunciation

which can also be found in the Italki tradition and, historically, in south-west Germany.
(The remnants of this pronunciation are found throughout the Ashkenazi world, in the
name "Yankl", a diminutive form of Jacob, Heb. .)
Hebrew also has dagesh, a strengthening. There are two kinds of strengthenings: light
(kal, known also as dagesh lene) and heavy (khazak or dagesh forte). There are two subcategories of the heavy dagesh: structural heavy (khazak tavniti) and complementing
heavy (khazak mashlim). The light affects the phonemes /b/ /k/ /p/ in the beginning of a
word, or after a resting schwa. Structural heavy emphases belong to certain vowel
patterns (mishkalim and binyanim; see the section on grammar below), and correspond
originally to doubled consonants. Complementing strengthening is added when vowel
assimilation takes place. As mentioned before, the emphasis influences which of a pair of
(former) allophones is pronounced. Historical evidence indicates that /g/, /d/ and /t/ also
used to have allophones marked by the presence or absence of dagesh kal: these have
disappeared from modern Hebrew pronunciation though the distinction in writing still
appears in fully pointed texts. All consonants except gutturals and /r/ may receive the
heavy emphasis (dagesh khazak).
[edit] Historical sound changes
Standard (non-Oriental) Israeli Hebrew (SIH) has undergone a number of splits and
mergers in its development from Biblical Hebrew.[18]

BH /b/ had two allophones, [b] and [v]; the [v] allophone has merged with /w/
into SIH /v/
BH /k/ had two allophones, [k] and [x]; the [k] allophone has merged with /q/ into
SIH /k/, while the [x] allophone has merged with // into SIH //
BH /t/ and /t/ have merged into SIH /t/
BH // and // have usually merged into SIH //, but this distinction may also be
upheld in educated speech of many Sephardim and some Ashkenazim
BH /p/ had two allophones, [p] and [f]; the incorporation of loanwords into
Modern Hebrew has probably resulted in a split, so that /p/ and /f/ are separate
phonemes.

[edit] Grammar
Main article: Hebrew grammar
Hebrew grammar is partly analytic, expressing such forms as dative, ablative, and
accusative using prepositional particles rather than grammatical cases. However,
inflection plays a decisive role in the formation of the verbs and nouns. E.g. nouns have a
construct state, called "smikhut", to denote the relationship of "belonging to": this is the
converse of the genitive case of more inflected languages. Words in smikhut are often
combined with hyphens. 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.

[edit] Writing system

Main article: Hebrew alphabet
Modern Hebrew is written from right to left using the Hebrew alphabet. Modern scripts
are based on the "square" letter form (which was developed from the Aramaic script). A
similar system is used in handwriting, but the letters tend to be more circular in their
character, and sometimes vary markedly from their printed equivalents. Biblical Hebrew
text contains nothing but consonants and spaces, and most modern Hebrew texts contain
only consonants, spaces and western-style punctuation. A pointing system (nikkud, from
the root word meaning "points" or "dots") developed around the 5th Century CE is used
to indicate vowels and syllabic stresses in some religious books, and is almost always
found in modern poetry, children's literature, and texts for beginning students of Hebrew.
The system is also used sparingly when it is necessary to avoid certain ambiguities of
meaning such as when context is insufficient to distinguish between two identically
spelled words and in the transliteration of foreign names.
All Hebrew consonant phonemes are represented by a single letter. Although a single
letter might represent two phonemes the letter "bet," for example, represents both /b/
and /v/ the two sounds are always related "hard" (plosive) and "soft" (fricative) forms,
their pronunciaton being very often determined by context. In fully pointed texts, the hard
form normally has a dot, known as a dagesh, in its center.
The letters hei, vav and yud can represent consonantal sounds (/h/, /v/ and /j/,
respectively) or serve as a markers for vowels. In the latter case, these letters are called
"emot qria" ("matres lectionis" in Latin, "mothers of reading" in English). The letter hei
at the end of a word usually indicates a final /a/, which in turn is usually indicative of
feminine gender. Vav may represent /o/ or /u/, and yod may represent /i/. Sometimes a
double yud is used for /ej/. In some modern Israeli texts, the letter alef is used to indicate
long /a/ sounds in foreign names, particularly those of Arabic origin.
Terminal syllabic emphasis is the most common[citation needed], penultimate emphasis being
the only other official option. Fully pointed texts will note variations with a vertical line
placed underneath the first consonant of the emphasized syllable, to the left of the vowel
mark if there is one. Spoken Hebrew admits of more stress variation than the official
dialect.

[edit] Romanization
Main article: Romanization of Hebrew
The Hebrew language is normally written in the Hebrew alphabet. Due to publishing
difficulties, and the unfamiliarity of many readers with the alphabet, there are many ways

of transcribing Hebrew into Roman letters. The most accepted method is the International
Phonetic Alphabet. It is used (in a simplified ASCII form) in the section concerned with
phonology, to describe the sounds of the Hebrew language. However, the IPA is not well
known, and is often considered cumbersome for transcribing pronunciations for a general
audience. Therefore this article uses a different system to express Hebrew pronunciation,
and at least some orthographic peculiarities. The system comes down to the following:

The letter tsadi ( )is transcribed as "ts" (although "tz", "z" or "s" is usually
acceptable).
The letter ayin ( )is omitted in transcription, the same as alef.
The letter shin ( )is transcribed as "sh", and the letter sin as "s".
Both the letter tav ( )and the letter tet ( )are transcribed as "t"
The letter khet ( )is transcribed by "kh" (although "ch" or "h" is usually
acceptable).
The letter kuf ( )is transcribed by "k" (although "q" is usually acceptable).
The letter vav ( )is transcribed as "v", but is omitted when mute.
The letter yod ( )is transcribed as "y", but is omitted when mute.
The letter hey ( )is transcribed as "h", but is omitted when mute at the end of a
word.
Single-letter prepositions and the definite article are separated with a dash (-)
from their subject.
Syllable stress and shva are not marked.
The vowels are always written in Roman transcriptions.

[edit] See also

Cantillation
Common phrases in Hebrew
Hebrew alphabet
Hebrew literature
Niqqud (vowel pointing)
Study of the Hebrew language

[edit] Notes
1. ^ Languages of the World (Hebrew)
2. ^ William M. Schniedewind, "Prolegomena for the Sociolinguistics of Classical
Hebrew", The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures vol. 5 article 6
3. ^ M. Segal, A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927).
4. ^ Elisha Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Harvard Semitic Studies
29 (Atlanta: Scholars Press 1986).
5. ^ The famous German Semitologist, Bergstrasser, in his book on Semitic
Languages (Einfhrung in die Semitischen Sprachen, Munich, 1928) divides his
discussion of Hebrew into three parts: Ancient Hebrew (Biblical Language);
Middle-Hebrew (Mishnaic language) and Modern Hebrew. To him Hebrew is but

one language amidst Assyrian, Syriac, Arabic, Maltese, etc. When discussing
Modern Hebrew, he says (page 47): ". . . . ein Hebraisch, das in Wirklichkeit eine
europische Sprache mit durchsichtiger hebrischer Verkleidung ist . . . mit nur
ganz usserlich hebrischem Charakter. (.. . . a Hebrew which is in reality a
European language with a transparent Hebrew disguise . . . . with only a purely
superficial Hebrew character).
6. ^ Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Resurgence of the Hebrew Language by Libby
Kantorwitz
7. ^ [http://www.israelversusjudaism.org/torah-judaism/lshon-hakodesh.cfm
8. ^ The Transformation of Jewish Culture in the USSR from 1930 to the Present (in
Russian)
9. ^ Nosonovski, Michael (in Russian)
10. ^ Protest against the suppression of Hebrew in the Soviet Union 1930-1931
signed by Albert Einstein, among others
11. ^ Wexler, Paul, The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew: A Slavic Language in
Search of a Semitic Past: 1990.
12. ^ Zuckermann, Mosaic or mosaic? The Genesis of the Israeli Language
13. ^ Elisha Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1986), p. 15.
14. ^ "Hebrew" in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edit. F.L. Cross,
first edition (Oxford, 1958), 3rd edition (Oxford 1997).
15. ^ Miguel Perez Fernandez, An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew
(Leiden, Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill 1997).
16. ^ William M. Schniedewind, "Prolegomena for the Sociolinguistics of Classical
Hebrew", The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures vol. 5 article 6
17. ^ Postalveolar sounds (with the exception of //) are not native to Hebrew, and
only found in borrowings.
18. ^ Robert Hetzron. (1987). Hebrew. In The World's Major Languages, ed. Bernard
Comrie, 686704. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-520521-9.

[edit] Bibliography

Hoffman, Joel M, In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language.

New York: NYU Press. ISBN 0-8147-3654-8.
Izre'el, Shlomo, "The emergence of Spoken Israeli Hebrew", in: Benjamin Hary
(ed.), The Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew (CoSIH): Working Papers I (2001)
Kuzar, Ron, Hebrew and Zionism: A Discourse Analytic Cultural Study. Berlin &
New York: Mouton de Gruyter 2001. ISBN 3-11-016993-2, ISBN 3-11-016992-4.
Senz-Badillos, Angel, A History of the Hebrew Language (trans. John Elwolde).
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-55634-1
Laufer, Asher. "Hebrew", in: Handbook of the International Phonetic Association.
Cambridge University Press 1999. ISBN 0-521-65236-7, ISBN 0-521-63751-1.

[edit] External links

Hebrew language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hebrew language edition of Wiktionary, the free dictionary/thesaurus

Wikibooks has more about this subject:

Hebrew

[edit] General

Online Hebrew community To learn Hebrew and find Hebrew partners.

Hebrew Keyboard Tutor
Hebrew alphabets with numerical values and literal and symbolic meanings
Mikledet.com - Send Hebrew emails without having a Hebrew keyboard
Hebrew Fontboard - for typing in Hebrew
Hebrew Vocabulary - with audio and transliterations
Ethnologue report for Hebrew
Academy of Hebrew Language, see Academy of the Hebrew Language
Ulpan-Or Center for Hebrew Studies and Israeli Culture in Jerusalem

[edit] Dictionaries

Root-based (Maskilon)
Word-search English-Hebrew and Hebrew-English (Morfix)
Hebrew-English (Maskilon)
Hebrew-English (DAVAR freeware, English)
Hebrew-English (Webster's Rosetta Edition)
English-Hebrew (Maskilon)
Collection of Hebrew bilingual dictionaries

[edit] Grammar

Online Hebrew Tutorial (foundationstone)

Hebrew is easy (babel-site)
Learn Hebrew Verbs

[edit] History of the Hebrew Language

History of the Hebrew Language, David Steinberg

Short History of the Hebrew Language, Chaim Rabin

Israeli Hebrew, David Tene

Israel Language Policy and Linguistics, Haiim B. Rosn
Words and their History, E. Y. Kutscher
Hebrew Slang and Foreign Loan Words, Raphael Sappan
Language in Time of Revolution, Benjamin Harshav
Hebrew typography in German speaking regions

[edit] Complete Texts in Hebrew

Mechon Mamre - The Bible, Mishnah, Talmud (Babylonian and Palestinian),

Tosefta, and Mishneh Torah
Book of Formation - An old Kabbalistic text relating the Hebrew
alphabet to the creation of the universe
Early Hebrew Newspapers Thousands of pages of mid- to late-19th-century and
early 20th-century newspapers written in Hebrew and readable on line. Including
contemporary accounts of the Battle of Gettysburg, the assassination of Czar
Alexander II, the Dreyfuss affair, etc.
Modern Semitic languages
Amharic | Arabic | Chaha | Harari | Hebrew | Inor | Maltese |
Neo-Aramaic | Silt'e | Soddo | South Arabian | Syriac | Tigre | Tigrinya
This box: view talk edit

Jewish
Langua
ges
Hebrew

vde

eras:

Biblical | Mishnaic | Medieval | Modern

Ashkenazi | Sephardi | Yemenite | Sanaani | Tiberian | Mizrahi |
dialects:
Samaritan Hebrew
Judeo-Aramaic
Biblical | Targum | Talmudic | Barzani | Hulaul | Lishana Deni
(Aramaic):
| Lishn Didn | Lishanid Noshan | Samaritan Aramaic
Southern Iraqi | Northern Iraqi | Moroccan | Yemenite | Libyan
Judeo-Arabic (Arabic):
| Algerian
Other:
Cushitic: Kayla | Qwara
Berber: Judeo-Berber
Indo-European
Yiddish
dialects: Eastern | Western | Litvish | Poylish | Ukrainish
(Germanic)
argots: Klezmer-loshn
Jewish English:
Yeshivish | Yinglish
Judeo-Romance
Catalanic | Judeo-Italian | Ladino | Haketia | Tetuani | Laaz |
(Romance):
Shuadit | Zarphatic | Lusitanic | Judeo-Aragonese
Judeo-Persian (Iranian): Bukhori | Juhuri | Dzhidi | Judeo-Hamedani | Judeo-Shirazi |
Judeo-Esfahani | Judeo-Kurdish | Judeo-Yazdi

Judeo-Kermani | Judeo-Kashani | Judeo-Borujerdi | JudeoKhunsari | Judeo-Golpaygani | Judeo-Nehevandi

Yevanic (Hellenic) | Knaanic (Slavic) | Judo-Marathi (IndoOther:
Aryan)
Turkic
Dravidian
Kartvelian
Krymchak | Karaim
Judeo-Malayalam
Gruzinic
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