Hebrew Language

Hebrew Language

Hebrew street sign, above in Hebrew alphabet, below in Latin letter transliteration. Aluf Batslut veAluf Shum(he) ("The Onion Champion and the Garlic Champion") is a maqama by Hayyim Nahman Bialik.

Hebrew (/ˈhiːbruː/) (עִבְרִית ʿIvrit, or ) is a West Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered by Jews and other ethnic or religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, although other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language was also used by non-Jewish groups, such as the ethnically related Samaritans. Hebrew ceased to be an everyday spoken language around 200 CE, and survived into the medieval period only as the language of Jewish liturgy and rabbinical literature. However, in the 19th century it was revived as a spoken and literary language and, according to Ethnologue is now the language of 5.3 million people worldwide, mainly in Israel.

Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of Israel (the other being Arabic), while Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world. The earliest examples of written Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE to the late Second Temple period, after which the language developed into Mishnaic Hebrew.

Ancient Hebrew is also the liturgical tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular, though today only about 700 Samaritans remain. As a foreign language it is studied mostly by Jews and students of Judaism and Israel, archaeologists and linguists specializing in the Middle East and its civilizations, by theologians, and in Christian seminaries.

The core of the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible), and most of the rest of 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, around the time of the Babylonian exile. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon HaKodesh (לשון הקודש), "The Holy Language", since ancient times.