Modern Hebrew (Hebrew: עברית ישראלית ivrit yisre'elit (standard Hebrew) or ivrit israelit (modern spoken Hebrew)), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Modern Israeli Hebrew, is the language spoken in Israel and in some diaspora Jewish communities worldwide, from the early 20th century to the present.
Modern Hebrew was developed in the late 19th century and early 20th century in a process often referred to as the "Revival of the Hebrew language".
Modern Hebrew is spoken nowadays by about seven million people — most of them citizens of Israel, or Israeli immigrants living around the world, of which three million are native speakers of Modern Israeli Hebrew, two million are new immigrants, one million are Israeli Arabs and half a million are Israelis or non-Israelis who live abroad, mostly in Jewish communities around the world.
Modern Hebrew is, together with Modern Standard Arabic, the first official language of the modern state of Israel, and even before the state's establishment it was one of the official languages of the British Mandate for Palestine.
The organization which officially investigates and directs the development of the Modern Hebrew language, under the law of the State of Israel, is the Academy of the Hebrew Language.
Read more about Modern Hebrew: Influences, Classification, Vocabulary
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or hebrew:
“Chaucer is fresh and modern still, and no dust settles on his true passages. It lightens along the line, and we are reminded that flowers have bloomed, and birds sung, and hearts beaten in England. Before the earnest gaze of the reader, the rust and moss of time gradually drop off, and the original green life is revealed. He was a homely and domestic man, and did breathe quite as modern men do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He asked water, and she gave him milk; she brought forth butter in
a lordly dish.
She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen’s
hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sis’e-ra, she smote off his
head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.”
—Bible: Hebrew Judges (l. V, 25–26)