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:
“These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented. We do not know their John Gutenberg, or Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have been gradually learned and taught.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse
and his rider.
Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?”
—Bible: Hebrew Job (l. XXXIX, 17–19)