Hebrew
Hebrew was revived as a spoken language two millennia after it ceased to be spoken, and is considered a language revival "success story". The language was extinct as a spoken language until the 19th century when it was revived by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda; prior to that, though respected and preserved as the holy language of Judaism, it was considered impractically archaic or too sacred for day-to-day communication, although it was, in fact, used as an international language between Jews who had no other common tongue, with several Hebrew-medium newspapers in circulation around Europe at the beginning of the 19th century, and a number of Zionist conferences being conducted exclusively in Hebrew. It is now, however, spoken by over 7,000,000 people. Most of these live in Israel, where Hebrew is the official and most commonly spoken language, but many in Jewish communities outside Israel have undertaken its study.
Read more about this topic: List Of Revived Languages
Famous quotes containing the word hebrew:
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
—Bible: Hebrew Isaiah 2:4.
“Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it
was said, There is a man child conceived.”
—Bible: Hebrew Job (l. III, 3)
“When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms, 8:2.
“Man was kreated a little lower than the angells and has bin gittin a little lower ever sinse.” (Josh Billings, His Sayings, ch. 28, 1865)