Modern Hebrew

Standard form of the Hebrew language

Modern Hebrew

* Hebrew
* Israeli Hebrew

עברית חדשה
'Ivrit ḥadasha

The common greeting "Shalom" written in the Hebrew alphabet, including vowel diacritics

Pronunciation| [ivˈʁit] listenⓘ
Native to| Land of Israel
Region| Southern Levant
Ethnicity| Israeli Jews
Speakers| 9 million (2014)[1][2][3]

* L1: 5 million
* L2: 4 million

Language family

Afro-Asiatic

* Semitic
* West
* Central
* Northwest
* Canaanite
* South
* Hebrew
* Modern Hebrew

Early forms

Biblical Hebrew

* Mishnaic Hebrew
* Medieval Hebrew

Writing system

| Hebrew alphabet
Hebrew Braille

Signed forms

| Israeli Sign Language[4]
Official status

Official language in

| Israel
Regulated by| Academy of the Hebrew Language
Language codes
ISO 639-1| `he`
ISO 639-2| `heb`
ISO 639-3| `heb`
Glottolog| `hebr1245`
Linguasphere| `12-AAB-ab`

The Hebrew-Speaking World:[5][6]

>50% of the population speaks Hebrew

25–50% of the population speaks Hebrew

<25% of the population speaks Hebrew

This article contains Hebrew text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Hebrew letters.

Modern Hebrew (endonym: עִבְרִית חֲדָשָׁה, romanized: 'Ivrit ḥadasha, IPA: [ivˈʁit χadaˈʃa] or [ʕivˈrit ħadaˈʃa]), also known as Israeli Hebrew or simply Hebrew, is the standard form of the Hebrew language spoken today. It is the only extant Canaanite language, as well as one of the oldest languages to be spoken today as a native language, on account of Hebrew being attested since the 2nd millennium BC.[7][8] It uses the Hebrew Alphabet, an abjad script written from right-to-left. The current standard was codified as part of the revival of Hebrew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and now serves as the sole official and national language of the State of Israel,[9][10] where it is predominantly spoken by over 9 million people. Thus, Modern Hebrew is near universally regarded as the most successful instance of language revitalization in history.[11][12]

A Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew was spoken since antiquity as the vernacular of the Israelites until around the 3rd century BCE, when it was supplanted by a western dialect of the Aramaic language, the local or dominant languages of the regions Jews migrated to, and later Judeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Spanish, Yiddish, and other Jewish languages.[13] Although Hebrew continued to be used for Jewish liturgy, poetry and literature, and written correspondence,[14] it became extinct as a spoken language.

By the late 19th century, Russian-Jewish linguist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda had begun a popular movement to revive Hebrew as an everyday language, motivated by his desire to preserve Hebrew literature and a distinct Jewish nationality in the context of Zionism.[15][16][17] Soon after, a large number of Yiddish and Judaeo-Spanish speakers were murdered in the Holocaust[18] or fled to Israel, and many speakers of Judeo-Arabic emigrated to Israel in the Jewish exodus from the Muslim world, where many would adapt to Modern Hebrew.[19]

Currently, Hebrew is spoken by approximately 9–10 million people, counting native, fluent, and non-fluent speakers.[20][21] Some 6 million of these speak it as their native language, the overwhelming majority of whom are Jews who were born in Israel or immigrated during early childhood. The rest is split: 2 million are immigrants to Israel; 1.5 million are Israeli Arabs, whose first language is usually Arabic; and half a million are expatriate Israelis or diaspora Jews.

Under Israeli law, the organization that officially directs the development of Modern Hebrew is the Academy of the Hebrew Language, headquartered at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

## Name

[edit]

The most common scholarly term for the language is "Modern Hebrew" (עברית חדשה). Most people refer to it simply as "Hebrew" (עברית Hebrew pronunciation: [ivˈʁit]).[22]

The term "Modern Hebrew" has been described as "somewhat problematic"[23] as it implies unambiguous periodization from Biblical Hebrew.[23] Haiim B. Rosén [he] (חיים רוזן) supported the now widely used[23] term "Israeli Hebrew" on the basis that it "represented the non-chronological nature of Hebrew".[22][24] In 1999, Israeli linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann proposed the term "Israeli" to represent the multiple origins of the language.[25]: 325 [22]

## Background

[edit]

Main article: Hebrew language

The history of the Hebrew language can be divided into four major periods:[26]

* Biblical Hebrew, until about the 3rd century BCE; the language of most of the Hebrew Bible
* Mishnaic Hebrew, the language of the Mishnah and Talmud
* Medieval Hebrew, from about the 6th to the 13th century CE
* Modern Hebrew, from the late 19th century to now, the language of the modern State of Israel

Jewish contemporary sources describe Hebrew flourishing as a spoken language in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, during about 1200 to 586 BCE.[27] Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew remained a spoken vernacular following the Babylonian captivity, when Old Aramaic became the predominant international language in the region.

Hebrew died out as a vernacular language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining after the Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–136 CE, which devastated the population of Judea. After the exile, Hebrew became restricted to liturgical and literary use.[28]

## Revival

[edit]

Main article: Revival of the Hebrew language

Hebrew had been spoken at various times and for many purposes throughout the Diaspora. During the Old Yishuv, it had developed into a spoken lingua franca among Palestinian Jews.[29] Eliezer Ben-Yehuda then led a revival of the Hebrew language as a mother tongue in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Modern Hebrew used Biblical Hebrew morphemes, Mishnaic spelling and grammar, and Sephardic pronunciation. Its acceptance by the early Jewish immigrants to Ottoman Palestine was caused primarily by support from the organisations of Edmond James de Rothschild in the 1880s and the official status it received in the 1922 constitution of the British Mandate for Palestine.[30][31][32][33] Ben-Yehuda codified and planned Modern Hebrew using 8,000 words from the Bible and 20,000 words from rabbinical commentaries. Many new words were borrowed from Arabic, due to the language's common Semitic roots with Hebrew, but changed to fit Hebrew phonology and grammar, for example the words gerev (sing.) and garbayim (pl.) are now applied to 'socks', a diminutive of the Arabic ğuwārib ('socks').[34][35] In addition, early Jewish immigrants, borrowing from the local Arabs, and later immigrants from Arab lands introduced many nouns as loanwords from Arabic (such as nana, zaatar, mishmish, kusbara, ḥilba, lubiya, hummus, gezer, rayḥan, etc.), as well as much of Modern Hebrew's slang. Despite Ben-Yehuda's fame as the renewer of Hebrew, the most productive renewer of Hebrew words was poet Haim Nahman Bialik.[citation needed]

One of the phenomena seen with the revival of the Hebrew language is that old meanings of nouns were occasionally changed for altogether different meanings, such as bardelas (ברדלס, a loanword from Koine Greek: πάρδαλις, romanized: párdalis, lit. 'leopard, panther'), which in Mishnaic Hebrew meant 'hyena',[36] but in Modern Hebrew it now means 'cheetah'; or shezīf (שזיף) which is now used for 'plum', but formerly meant 'jujube'.[37] The word kishū’īm (formerly 'cucumbers')[38] is now applied to a variety of summer squash (Cucurbita pepo var. cylindrica), a plant native to the New World. Another example is the word kǝvīsh (כביש), which now denotes a street or a road, but is actually an Aramaic adjective meaning 'trodden down' or 'blazed', rather than a common noun. It was originally used to describe a blazed trail.[39][40] The flower Anemone coronaria, called in Modern Hebrew kalanit (כלנית), was formerly called in Hebrew shoshanat ha-melekh ('the king's flower').[41][42]

## Classification

[edit]

Modern Hebrew is classified as an Afroasiatic language of the Semitic family, within the Canaanite branch of the Northwest Semitic subgroup.[43][44][45][46] While Modern Hebrew is largely based on Mishnaic and Biblical Hebrew as well as Sephardi and Ashkenazi liturgical and literary tradition from the Medieval and Haskalah eras and retains its Semitic character in its morphology and in much of its syntax,[47][48][page needed] some scholars posit that Modern Hebrew represents a fundamentally new linguistic system, not directly continuing any previous linguistic state, though this is not the consensus among scholars.[49]

Modern Hebrew is considered to be a koiné language based on historical layers of Hebrew that incorporates foreign elements, mainly those introduced during the most critical revival period between 1880 and 1920, as well as new elements created by speakers through natural linguistic evolution.[49][43] A minority of scholars argue that the revived language had been so influenced by various substrate languages that it is genealogically a hybrid with Indo-European.[50][51][52][53] These theories are controversial and have not been met with general acceptance, and the consensus among a majority of scholars is that Modern Hebrew, despite its non-Semitic influences, can correctly be classified as a Semitic language.[44][54] Although Modern Hebrew has more of the features attributed to Standard Average European than Biblical Hebrew, it is still quite distant, and has fewer such features than Modern Standard Arabic.[55]

## Alphabet

[edit]

Main articles: Hebrew alphabet and Cursive Hebrew

Modern Hebrew is written from right to left using the Hebrew alphabet, which is an abjad, or consonant-only script of 22 letters based on the "square" letter form, known as Ashurit (Assyrian), which was developed from the Aramaic script. A cursive script is used in handwriting. When necessary, vowels are indicated by diacritic marks above or below the letters known as Niqqud, or by use of Matres lectionis, which are consonantal letters used as vowels. Further diacritics like Dagesh and Sin and Shin dots are used to indicate variations in the pronunciation of the consonants (e.g. bet/vet, shin/sin). The letters "צ׳", "ג׳", "ז׳", each modified with a Geresh, represent the consonants [t͡ʃ], [d͡ʒ], [ʒ]. The consonant [t͡ʃ] may also be written as "תש" and "טש". [w] is represented interchangeably by a simple vav "ו", non-standard double vav "וו" and sometimes by non-standard geresh modified vav "ו׳".

Name  | Alef | Bet | Gimel | Dalet | He | Vav | Zayin | Chet | Tet | Yod | Kaf | Lamed | Mem | Nun | Samech | Ayin | Pe | Tzadi | Qof | Resh | Shin | Tav

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Printed letter  | א | ב | ג | ד | ה | ו | ז | ח | ט | י | כ
ך | ל | מ
ם | נ
ן | ס | ע | פ
ף | צ
ץ | ק | ר | ש | ת
Cursive letter  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |

|  |  |

|  |  |  |
Pronunciation  | /ʔ/, /∅/ | /b/, /v/ | /g/ | /d/ | /h/ | /v/ /u/, /o/, /w/ | /z/ | /χ~ħ/ | /t/ | /j/, /i/, /e(i̯)/ | /k/, /χ/ | /l/ | /m/ | /n/ | /s/ | /ʔ~ʕ/, /∅/ | /p/, /f/ | /t͡s/ | /k/ | /ʁ~r/ | /ʃ/, /s/ | /t/
Transliteration  | ', ∅ | b, v  | g  | d  | h  | v, u, o, w  | z  | kh, ch, h  | t  | y, i, e, ei  | k, kh  | l  | m  | n  | s  | ', ∅ | p, f  | ts, tz  | k  | r  | sh, s  | t

## Phonology

[edit]

Main article: Modern Hebrew phonology

Modern Hebrew has fewer phonemes than Biblical Hebrew but it has developed its own phonological complexity. Israeli Hebrew has 25 to 27 consonants, depending on whether the speaker has pharyngeals. It has 5 to 10 vowels, depending on whether diphthongs and vowels are counted, varying with the speaker and the analysis.

## Morphology

[edit]

Modern Hebrew morphology (formation, structure, and interrelationship of words in a language) is essentially Biblical.[56] Modern Hebrew showcases much of the inflectional morphology of the classical upon which it was based. In the formation of new words, all verbs and the majority of nouns and adjectives are formed by the classically Semitic devices of triconsonantal roots (shoresh) with affixed patterns (mishkal). Mishnaic attributive patterns are often used to create nouns, and Classical patterns are often used to create adjectives. Blended words are created by merging two bound stems or parts of words.

## Syntax

[edit]

Main article: Modern Hebrew grammar

The syntax of Modern Hebrew is mainly Mishnaic[56] but also shows the influence of different contact languages to which its speakers have been exposed during the revival period and over the past century.

### Word order

[edit]

The word order of Modern Hebrew is predominately SVO (subject–verb–object). Biblical Hebrew was originally VSO (verb–subject–object), but drifted into SVO.[57] In the modern language, a sentence may correctly be arranged in any order but its meaning might be hard to understand unless אֶת is used.[clarification needed] Modern Hebrew maintains classical syntactic properties associated with VSO languages:[clarification needed] it is prepositional, rather than postpositional, in marking case and adverbial relations, auxiliary verbs precede main verbs; main verbs precede their complements, and noun modifiers (adjectives, determiners other than the definite article ה- (ha), and noun adjuncts) follow the head noun; and in genitive constructions, the possessee noun precedes the possessor. Moreover, Modern Hebrew allows and sometimes requires sentences with a predicate initial.

## Sample text

[edit]

From Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Modern Hebrew[58] | Transliteration  | English[59]

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כׇּל בְּנֵי הָאָדָם נוֹלְדוּ בְּנֵי חוֹרִין וְשָׁוִים בְּעֶרְכָּם וּבִזְכֻיוֹתֵיהֶם. כֻּלָם חוֹנְנוּ בִּתְבוּנָה וְּבְמַצְפּוּן, לְפִיכָךְ חוֹבָה עֲלֵיהֶם לִנְהֹג אִישׁ בְּרֵעֵהוּ בְּרוּחַ שֶׁל אַחֲוָה.

| Kol bne ha'adam noldu bne chorin veshavim be'erkam uvizchuyotehem. Kulam chonenu bitvunah uvematzpun, lefichach chovah 'alehem linhog 'ish bere'ehu beruach shel achavah. | All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

## Lexicon

[edit]

Modern Hebrew has expanded its vocabulary effectively to meet the needs of casual vernacular, of science and technology, of journalism and belles-lettres. According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann:

> The number of attested Biblical Hebrew words is 8198, of which some 2000 are hapax legomena (the number of Biblical Hebrew roots, on which many of these words are based, is 2099). The number of attested Rabbinic Hebrew words is less than 20,000, of which (i) 7879 are Rabbinic par excellence, i.e. they did not appear in the Old Testament (the number of new Rabbinic Hebrew roots is 805); (ii) around 6000 are a subset of Biblical Hebrew; and (iii) several thousand are Aramaic words which can have a Hebrew form. Medieval Hebrew added 6421 words to (Modern) Hebrew. The approximate number of new lexical items in Israeli is 17,000 (cf. 14,762 in Even-Shoshan 1970 [...]). With the inclusion of foreign and technical terms [...], the total number of Israeli words, including words of biblical, rabbinic and medieval descent, is more than 60,000.[60]: 64–65

### Loanwords

[edit]

Modern Hebrew has loanwords from Arabic (both from the local Palestinian dialect and from the dialects of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries), Aramaic, Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish, German, Polish, Russian, English and other languages. Simultaneously, Israeli Hebrew makes use of words that were originally loanwords from the languages of surrounding nations from ancient times: Canaanite languages as well as Akkadian. Mishnaic Hebrew borrowed many nouns from Aramaic (including Persian words borrowed by Aramaic), as well as from Greek and to a lesser extent Latin.[61] In the Middle Ages, Hebrew made heavy semantic borrowing from Arabic, especially in the fields of science and philosophy. Here are typical examples of Hebrew loanwords:

loanword | derivatives | origin

|
|

Hebrew | IPA | meaning | Hebrew | IPA | meaning | language | spelling | meaning
בַּי | /baj/ | goodbye |  | English | bye
אֶגְזוֹז | /eɡˈzoz/ | exhaust system |  | exhaust
system
דיג׳יי | /ˈdidʒej/ | DJ | דיג׳ה | /diˈdʒe/ | to DJ | to DJ
וַאלְלָה | /ˈwala/ | really!? |  | Arabic | والله | really!?
כֵּיף | /kef/ | fun | כַּיֵּף | /kiˈjef/ | to have fun[w 1] | كيف | pleasure
תַּאֲרִיךְ | /taʔaˈʁiχ/ | date | תֶּאֱרַךְ | /teʔeˈreχ/ | to date | تاريخ | date, history
חְנוּן | /χnun/ | geek, wimp,
nerd, "square" |  | Moroccan Arabic | خنونة | snot
אַבָּא | /ˈaba/ | dad |  | Aramaic | אבא | the father/my father
דוּגרִי | /ˈdugʁi/ | forthright |  | Ottoman Turkish | طوغری
doğrı | correct
פַּרְדֵּס | /paʁˈdes/ | orchard |  | Avestan | 𐬞𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌⸱𐬛𐬀𐬉𐬰𐬀 | garden
אֲלַכְסוֹן | /alaχˈson/ | diagonal  |  | Greek | λοξός  | slope
וִילוֹן | /viˈlon/ | curtain  |  | Latin | vēlum  | veil, curtain
חַלְטוּרָה | /χalˈtuʁa/ | shoddy job | חִלְטֵר | /χilˈteʁ/ | to moonlight | Russian | халтура | shoddy work[w 2]
בָּלָגָן | /balaˈɡan/ | mess | בִּלְגֵּן | /bilˈɡen/ | to make a mess | балаган | chaos[w 2]
תַּכְלֶ׳ס | /ˈtaχles/ | directly/
essentially |  | Yiddish | תכלית | goal
(Hebrew word, only pronunciation is Yiddish)
חְרוֹפּ | /χʁop/ | deep sleep | חָרַפּ | /χaˈʁap/ | to sleep deeply | כראָפ | snore
שְׁפַּכְטֵל | /ˈʃpaχtel/ | putty knife |  | German | Spachtel | putty knife
גּוּמִי | /ˈɡumi/ | rubber | גּוּמִיָּה | /ɡumiˈja/ | rubber band | Gummi | rubber
גָּזוֹז | /ɡaˈzoz/ | carbonated
beverage |  | Turkish
from
French | gazoz[w 3]
from
eau gazeuse | carbonated
beverage
פּוּסְטֵמָה | /pusˈtema/ | stupid woman |  | Ladino | פּוֹשׂטֵימה
postema | inflamed wound[w 4]
אַדְרִיכָל | /adʁiˈχal/ | architect | אַדְרִיכָלוּת | /adʁiχaˈlut/ | architecture | Akkadian | 𒀵𒂍𒃲 | temple servant[w 5]
צִי | /t͡si/ | fleet |  | Ancient Egyptian | ḏꜣy | ship

1. ^ bitFormation. "Loanwords in Hebrew from Arabic". Safa-ivrit.org. Archived from the original on 11 October 2014. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
2. ^ a b bitFormation. "Loanwords in Hebrew from Russian". Safa-ivrit.org. Archived from the original on 10 October 2014. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
3. ^ bitFormation. "Loanwords in Hebrew from Turkish". Safa-ivrit.org. Archived from the original on 10 October 2014. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
4. ^ bitFormation. "Loanwords in Hebrew from Ladino". Safa-ivrit.org. Archived from the original on 8 February 2005. Retrieved 26 August 2014.
5. ^ אתר השפה העברית. "Loanwords in Hebrew from Akkadian". Safa-ivrit.org. Archived from the original on 10 October 2014. Retrieved 26 August 2014.

## See also

[edit]

* Biblical Hebrew

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Hebrew". UCLA Language Materials Project. University of California. Archived from the original on 11 March 2011. Retrieved 1 May 2017.
2. ^ Dekel 2014
3. ^ "Hebrew". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 14 May 2020. Retrieved 12 July 2018.
4. ^ Meir & Sandler, 2013, A Language in Space: The Story of x Sign Language
5. ^ אוכלוסייה, לפי קבוצת אוכלוסייה, דת, גיל ומין, מחוז ונפה [Population, by Population Group, Religion, age and sex, district and sub-district] (PDF) (in Hebrew). Central Bureau of Statistics. 6 September 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 May 2018. Retrieved 24 May 2018.
6. ^ "The Arab Population in Israel" (PDF). Central Bureau of Statistics. November 2002. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 24 May 2018.
7. ^ Aderet, Ofer (20 January 2023). "Two 3,800-year-old Cuneiform Tablets Found in Iraq Give First Glimpse of Hebrew Precursor". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 21 January 2023. Retrieved 24 January 2023.
8. ^ Hebrew language, Wikidata Q9288
9. ^ "The Official Language of Israel". IFCJ. Retrieved 12 July 2025.
10. ^ Baker, Sarah (12 July 2024). "How Is Modern Hebrew Related to Biblical Hebrew?". Bible Odyssey. Retrieved 12 July 2025.
11. ^ Grenoble, Leonore A.; Whaley, Lindsay J. (2005). Saving Languages: An Introduction to Language Revitalization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 63\. ISBN 978-0521016520. "Hebrew is cited by Paulston et al. (1993:276) as 'the only true example of language revival.'"
12. ^ Huehnergard, John; Pat-El, Na'ama (2019). The Semitic Languages. Routledge. p. 571\. ISBN 9780429655388. Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 18 February 2021.
13. ^ Language Contact and the Development of Modern Hebrew. BRILL. 16 November 2015. pp. 3, 7. ISBN 978-90-04-31089-6.
14. ^ Schwarzwald, Ora (Rodrigue) (2012). "Modern Hebrew". In Weninger, Stefan; Khan, Geoffrey; Streck, Michael P.; Watson, Janet C. E. (eds.). The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. De Gruyter. p. 534\. doi:10.1515/9783110251586.523. ISBN 978-3-11-025158-6.
15. ^ Mandel, George (2005). "Ben-Yehuda, Eliezer [Eliezer Yizhak Perelman] (1858–1922)". Encyclopedia of modern Jewish culture. Glenda Abramson ([New ed.] ed.). London. ISBN 0-415-29813-X. OCLC 57470923. "In 1879 he wrote an article for the Hebrew press advocating Jewish immigration to Palestine. Ben-Yehuda argued that only in a country with a Jewish majority could a living Hebrew literature and a distinct Jewish nationality survive; elsewhere, the pressure to assimilate to the language of the majority would cause Hebrew to die out. Shortly afterwards he reached the conclusion that the active use of Hebrew as a literary language could not be sustained, notwithstanding the hoped-for concentration of Jews in Palestine, unless Hebrew also became the everyday spoken language there."`{{cite book}}`: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
16. ^ Fellman, Jack (19 July 2011). The Revival of Classical Tongue : Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Modern Hebrew Language. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-087910-0. OCLC 1089437441.
17. ^ Kuzar, Ron (2001), Hebrew and Zionism, Berlin, Boston: DE GRUYTER, doi:10.1515/9783110869491.vii, archived from the original on 1 July 2023, retrieved 10 May 2023
18. ^ Solomon Birnbaum, Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache (4., erg. Aufl., Hamburg: Buske, 1984), p. 3.
19. ^ Berdichevsky, Norman (21 March 2016). Modern Hebrew: The Past and Future of a Revitalized Language. McFarland. pp. 39, 65, 73, 77, 81, 101. ISBN 978-1-4766-2629-1.
20. ^ Klein, Zeev (18 March 2013). "A million and a half Israelis struggle with Hebrew". Israel Hayom. Archived from the original on 4 November 2013. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
21. ^ Nachman Gur; Behadrey Haredim. "Kometz Aleph – Au• How many Hebrew speakers are there in the world?". Archived from the original on 4 November 2013. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
22. ^ a b c Dekel 2014; quote: "Most people refer to Israeli Hebrew simply as Hebrew. Hebrew is a broad term, which includes Hebrew as it was spoken and written in different periods of time and according to most of the researchers as it is spoken and written in Israel and elsewhere today. Several names have been proposed for the language spoken in Israel nowadays, Modern Hebrew is the most common one, addressing the latest spoken language variety in Israel (Berman 1978, Saenz-Badillos 1993:269, Coffin-Amir & Bolozky 2005, Schwarzwald 2009:61). The emergence of a new language in Palestine at the end of the nineteenth century was associated with debates regarding the characteristics of that language.... Not all scholars supported the term Modern Hebrew for the new language. Rosén (1977:17) rejected the term Modern Hebrew, since linguistically he claimed that 'modern' should represent a linguistic entity that should command autonomy towards everything that preceded it, while this was not the case in the new emerging language. He also rejected the term Neo-Hebrew, because the prefix 'neo' had been previously used for Mishnaic and Medieval Hebrew (Rosén 1977:15–16), additionally, he rejected the term Spoken Hebrew as one of the possible proposals (Rosén 1977:18). Rosén supported the term Israeli Hebrew as in his opinion it represented the non-chronological nature of Hebrew, as well as its territorial independence (Rosén 1977:18). Rosén then adopted the term Contemporary Hebrew from Téne (1968) for its neutrality, and suggested the broadening of this term to Contemporary Israeli Hebrew (Rosén 1977:19)"
23. ^ a b c Matras & Schiff 2005; quote: The language with which we are concerned in this contribution is also known by the names Contemporary Hebrew and Modern Hebrew, both somewhat problematic terms as they rely on the notion of an unambiguous periodization separating Classical or Biblical Hebrew from the present-day language. We follow instead the now widely-used label coined by Rosén (1955), Israeli Hebrew, to denote the link between the emergence of a Hebrew vernacular and the emergence of an Israeli national identity in Israel/Palestine in the early twentieth century."
24. ^ Haiim Rosén (1 January 1977). Contemporary Hebrew. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 15–18\. ISBN 978-3-11-080483-6.
25. ^ Zuckermann, G. (1999), "Review of the Oxford English-Hebrew Dictionary", International Journal of Lexicography, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 325-346
26. ^ Hebrew language Archived 2015-06-11 at the Wayback Machine Encyclopædia Britannica
27. ^ אברהם בן יוסף ,מבוא לתולדות הלשון העברית (Avraham ben-Yosef, Introduction to the History of the Hebrew Language), page 38, אור-עם, Tel Aviv, 1981.
28. ^ Sáenz-Badillos, Ángel and John Elwolde: "There is general agreement that two main periods of RH (Rabbinical Hebrew) can be distinguished. The first, which lasted until the close of the Tannaitic era (around 200 CE), is characterized by RH as a spoken language gradually developing into a literary medium in which the Mishnah, Tosefta, baraitot and Tannaitic midrashim would be composed. The second stage begins with the Amoraim and sees RH being replaced by Aramaic as the spoken vernacular, surviving only as a literary language. Then it continued to be used in later rabbinic writings until the tenth century in, for example, the Hebrew portions of the two Talmuds and in midrashic and haggadic literature."
29. ^ Tudor Parfitt; The Contribution of the old Yishuv to the Revival of Hebrew, Journal of Semitic Studies, Volume XXIX, Issue 2, 1 October 1984, Pages 255–265, https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/XXIX.2.255 Archived 2023-07-01 at the Wayback Machine
30. ^ Hobsbawm, Eric (2012). Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-39446-9., "What would the future of Hebrew have been, had not the British Mandate in 1919 accepted it as one of the three official languages of Palestine, at a time when the number of people speaking Hebrew as an everyday language was less than 20,000?"
31. ^ Swirski, Shlomo (11 September 2002). Politics and Education in Israel: Comparisons with the United States. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-58242-5.: "In retrospect, [Hobsbawm's] question should be rephrased, substituting the Rothschild house for the British state and the 1880s for 1919. For by the time the British conquered Palestine, Hebrew had become the everyday language of a small but well-entrenched community."
32. ^ Palestine Mandate (1922): "English, Arabic and Hebrew shall be the official languages of Palestine"
33. ^ Benjamin Harshav (1999). Language in Time of Revolution. Stanford University Press. pp. 85–. ISBN 978-0-8047-3540-7.
34. ^ Even-Shoshan, A., ed. (2003). Even-Shoshan Dictionary (in Hebrew). Vol. 1\. ha-Milon he-ḥadash Ltd. p. 275\. ISBN 965-517-059-4. OCLC 55071836.
35. ^ Cf. Rabbi Hai Gaon's commentary on Mishnah Kelim 27:6, where אמפליא (ampalya) was used formerly for the same, and had the equivalent meaning of the Arabic word ğuwārib ('stockings'; 'socks').
36. ^ Maimonides' commentary and Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura's commentary on Mishnah Baba Kama 1:4; Rabbi Nathan ben Abraham's Mishnah Commentary, Baba Metzia 7:9, s.v. הפרדלס; Sefer Arukh, s.v. ברדלס; Zohar Amar, Flora and Fauna in Maimonides' Teachings, Kefar Darom 2015, pp. 177–178; 228
37. ^ Zohar Amar, Flora and Fauna in Maimonides' Teachings, Kfar Darom 2015, p. 157, s.v. שזפין OCLC 783455868, explained to mean 'jujube' (Ziziphus jujuba); Solomon Sirilio's Commentary of the Jerusalem Talmud, on Kila'im 1:4, s.v. השיזפין, which he explained to mean in Spanish azufaifas ('jujubes'). See also Saul Lieberman, Glossary in Tosephta \- based on the Erfurt and Vienna Codices (ed. M.S. Zuckermandel), Jerusalem 1970, s.v. שיזפין (p. LXL), explained in German as meaning Brustbeerbaum ('jujube').
38. ^ Thus explained by Maimonides in his Commentary on Mishnah Kila'im 1:2 and in Mishnah Terumot 2:6. See: Zohar Amar, Flora and Fauna in Maimonides' Teachings, Kefar Darom 2015, pp. 111, 149 (Hebrew) OCLC 783455868; Zohar Amar, Agricultural Produce in the Land of Israel in the Middle Ages (Hebrew title: גידולי ארץ-ישראל בימי הביניים), Ben-Zvi Institute: Jerusalem 2000, p. 286 ISBN 965-217-174-3 (Hebrew)
39. ^ Compare Rashi's commentary on Exodus 9:17, where he says the word mesillah is translated in Aramaic oraḥ kevīsha ('a blazed trail'), the word kevīsh being only an adjective or descriptive word, but not a common noun as it is used today. It is said that Ze'ev Yavetz (1847-1924) is the one who coined this modern Hebrew word for 'road'. See Haaretz, Contributions made by Ze'ev Yavetz Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine; Maltz, Judy (25 January 2013). "With Tu Bishvat Near, a Tree Grows in Zichron Yaakov". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 28 March 2017. Retrieved 27 March 2017.
40. ^ Roberto Garvia, Esperanto and its Rivals, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015, p. 164
41. ^ Amar, Z. (2015). Flora and Fauna in Maimonides' Teachings (in Hebrew). Kfar Darom. p. 156\. OCLC 783455868.`{{cite book}}`: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link), s.v. citing Maimonides on Mishnah Kil'ayim 5:8
42. ^ Matar – Science and Technology On-line, the Common Anemone (in Hebrew)
43. ^ a b Hebrew at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
44. ^ a b Weninger, Stefan, Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet CE Watson, Gábor Takács, Vermondo Brugnatelli, H. Ekkehard Wolff et al. The Semitic Languages. An International Handbook. Berlin–Boston (2011).
45. ^ Robert Hetzron (1997). The Semitic Languages. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780415057677. Archived from the original on 23 February 2023. Retrieved 1 November 2020.[failed verification]
46. ^ Hadumod Bussman (2006). Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. Routledge. p. 199\. ISBN 9781134630387.
47. ^ Robert Hetzron. (1987). "Hebrew". In The World's Major Languages, ed. Bernard Comrie, 686–704. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
48. ^ Patrick R. Bennett (1998). Comparative Semitic Linguistics: A Manual. Eisenbrauns. ISBN 9781575060217. Archived from the original on 1 July 2023. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
49. ^ a b Reshef, Yael. Revival of Hebrew: Grammatical Structure and Lexicon. Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics. (2013).
50. ^ Olga Kapeliuk (1996). "Is Modern Hebrew the only "Indo-Europeanied" Semitic Language? And what about Neo-Aramaic?". In Shlomo Izre'el; Shlomo Raz (eds.). Studies in Modern Semitic Languages. Israel Oriental Studies. BRILL. p. 59\. ISBN 9789004106468.
51. ^ Wexler, Paul, The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew: A Slavic Language in Search of a Semitic Past: 1990.
52. ^ Izre'el, Shlomo (2003). "The Emergence of Spoken Israeli Hebrew." In: Benjamin H. Hary (ed.), Corpus Linguistics and Modern Hebrew: Towards the Compilation of The Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew (CoSIH)", Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, The Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies, 2003, pp. 85–104.
53. ^ See p. 62 in Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), "A New Vision for 'Israeli Hebrew': Theoretical and Practical Implications of Analysing Israel's Main Language as a Semi-Engineered Semito-European Hybrid Language", Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5 (1), pp. 57–71.
54. ^ Yael Reshef. "The Re-Emergence of Hebrew as a National Language" in Weninger, Stefan, Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet CE Watson, Gábor Takács, Vermondo Brugnatelli, H. Ekkehard Wolff et al. (eds) The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Berlin–Boston (2011). p. 551
55. ^ Amir Zeldes (2013). "Is Modern Hebrew Standard Average European? The View from European" (PDF). Linguistic Typology. 17 (3): 439–470\. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 May 2021. Retrieved 13 July 2021.
56. ^ a b R. Malatesha Joshi; P. G. Aaron, eds. (2013). Handbook of Orthography and Literacy. Routledge. p. 343\. ISBN 9781136781353. Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 20 June 2015.
57. ^ Li, Charles N. Mechanisms of Syntactic Change. Austin: U of Texas, 1977. Print.
58. ^ "OHCHR | Universal Declaration of Human Rights - Hebrew".
59. ^ "Universal Declaration of Human Rights". United Nations.
60. ^ Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003), Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1403917232 [1] Archived 2019-06-13 at the Wayback Machine
61. ^ The Latin "familia", from which English "family" is derived, entered Mishnaic Hebrew - and thence, Modern Hebrew - as "pamalya" (פמליה) meaning "entourage". (The original Latin "familia" referred both to a prominent Roman's family and to his household in general, including the entourage of slaves and freedmen which accompanied him in public - hence, both the English and the Hebrew one are derived from the Latin meaning.)

## Bibliography

[edit]

* Choueka, Yaakov (1997). Rav-Milim: A comprehensive dictionary of Modern Hebrew. Tel Aviv: CET. ISBN 978-965-448-323-0.
* Ben-Ḥayyim, Ze'ev (1992). The Struggle for a Language. Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language.
* Dekel, Nurit (2014). Colloquial Israeli Hebrew: A Corpus-based Survey. De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-037725-5.
* Gila Freedman Cohen; Carmia Shoval (2011). Easing Into Modern Hebrew Grammar: A User-friendly Reference and Exercise Book. Magnes Press. ISBN 978-965-493-601-9.
* Shlomo Izreʾel; Shlomo Raz (1996). Studies in Modern Semitic Languages. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-10646-8.
* Matras, Yaron; Schiff, Leora (2005). "Spoken Israeli Hebrew revisited: Structures and variation" (PDF). Studia Semitica. 16: 145–193.
* Ornan, Uzzi (2003). "The Final Word: Mechanism for Hebrew Word Generation". Hebrew Studies. 45. Haifa University: 285–287\. JSTOR 27913706.
* Bergsträsser, Gotthelf (1983). Peter T. Daniels (ed.). Introduction to the Semitic Languages: Text Specimens and Grammatical Sketches. Eisenbrauns. ISBN 978-0-931464-10-2.
* Haiim B. Rosén [in Hebrew] (1962). A Textbook of Israeli Hebrew. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-72603-8. `{{cite book}}`: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
* Stefan Weninger (23 December 2011). The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-025158-6.
* Wexler, Paul (1990). The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew: A Slavic Language in Search of a Semitic Past. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-447-03063-2.
* Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003). Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1403917232.

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