Hebrew language

History

While the term "Hebrew" as a nationality is customarily used to refer to the ancient Israelites, the classical Hebrew language was extremely similar to the Canaanite languages spoken by their neighbors, such as Phoenician; indeed, Moabite and Hebrew are often considered to be two dialects of the same language.

Related Topics:
Israelite - Canaanite languages - Phoenician - Moabite

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Hebrew strongly resembles Aramaic and to a lesser extent South-Central Arabic, sharing many linguistic features with them.

Related Topics:
Aramaic - Arabic

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Early history

Hebrew is an Afro-Asiatic language. This language family is generally thought by linguists to have originated somewhere in northeastern Africa, and began to diverge around the 8th millennium BCE, although there is much debate about the exact date and place. (The theory is espoused by most archeologists and linguists, but at odds with traditional reading of the Torah.) One branch of this family, Semitic, eventually reached the Middle East; it gradually differentiated into a variety of related languages.

Related Topics:
Africa - 8th millennium BCE - Semitic - Middle East

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By the end of the 3rd millennium BCE the ancestral languages of Aramaic, Ugaritic, and other various Canaanite languages were spoken in the Levant alongside the influential dialects of Ebla and Akkad. As the Hebrew founders from northern Haran filtered south into and came under the influence of the Levant, like many sojourners into Canaan including the Philistines, they adopted Canaanite dialects. The first written evidence of distinctive Hebrew, the Gezer calendar, dates back to the 10th century BCE, the traditional time of the reign of David and Solomon. It presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar (named after the city in whose proximity it was found) is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks and Etruscans later became the Roman script. The Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where more modern spelling requires it (see below).

Related Topics:
3rd millennium BCE - Aramaic - Ugaritic - Canaanite - Levant - Ebla - Akkad - Haran - Philistines - Gezer calendar - 10th century BCE - David - Solomon - Gezer - Phoenician - Greek - Etruscan - Roman script

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Numerous older tablets have been found in the region with similar scripts written in other Semitic languages, for example Protosinaitic. It is believed that the original shapes of the script go back to the hieroglyphs of the Egyptian writing, though the phonetic values are instead inspired by the acrophonic principle. The common ancestor of Hebrew and Phoenician is called Canaanite, and was the first to use a Semitic alphabet distinct from Egyptian. One ancient document is the famous Moabite Stone written in the Moabite dialect; the Siloam Inscription, found near Jerusalem, is an early example of Hebrew. Less ancient samples of Old Hebrew include the ostraka found near Lachish which describe events preceding the final capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity of 586 BCE.

Related Topics:
Protosinaitic - Acrophonic - Canaanite - Moabite Stone - Siloam Inscription - Jerusalem - Lachish - Nebuchadnezzar - 586 BCE

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The most famous work originally written in Hebrew is the Hebrew Bible, though the time at which it was written is a matter of dispute (see dating the Bible for details). The earliest extant copies were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, written between the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE.

Related Topics:
Dating the Bible - Dead Sea Scrolls - 2nd century BCE - 1st century

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The formal language of the latter Babylonian Empire was Aramaic (its name is either derived from "Aram Naharayim", Upper Mesopotamia, or from "Aram," the ancient name for Syria). The Persian Empire, which had captured Babylonia a few decades later under Cyrus, adopted Aramaic as the official language. Aramaic is also a North-West Semitic language, quite similar to Hebrew. Aramaic has contributed many words and expressions to Hebrew, mainly as the language of commentary in the Talmud and other religious works.

Related Topics:
Babylonian Empire - Persian Empire - Aramaic - Talmud

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In addition to numerous words and expressions, Hebrew also borrowed the Aramaic writing system. Although the original Aramaic letter forms were derived from the same Phoenician alphabet that was used in ancient Israel, they had changed significantly, both in the hands of the Mesopotamians and of the Jews, assuming the forms familiar to us today around the first century CE. Writings of that era (most notably, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Qumran) are written in a script very similar to the "square" one still used today.

Related Topics:
Aramaic writing system - First century - Dead Sea Scrolls - Qumran

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Later history

The Jews living in the Persian Empire adopted Aramaic, and Hebrew quickly fell into disuse. It was preserved, however, as the literary language of Bible study. Aramaic became the vernacular language of the renewed Judaea for the following 700 years. Famous works written in Aramaic include the Targum, the Talmud and several of Flavius Josephus' books (several of the latter were not preserved, however, in the original.) Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE, the Jews gradually began to disperse from Judaea into foreign countries (this dispersion was hastened when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem (and turned it into a pagan city named Aelia Capitolina) in 135 CE after putting down Bar Kokhba's revolt.) For many hundreds of years Aramaic remained the spoken language of Mesopotamian Jews, and Lishana Deni, one of several Judæo-Aramaic languages, is a modern descendant that is still spoken by a few thousand Jews (and many non-Jews) from the area known as Kurdistan; however, it gradually gave way to Arabic, as it had given way to other local languages in the countries to which the Jews had gone.

Related Topics:
Targum - Talmud - Flavius Josephus - Destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple - 70 - Bar Kokhba's revolt - Lishana Deni - Judæo-Aramaic language - Kurdistan

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Hebrew was not used as a mother tongue for roughly 1800 years. However the Jews have always devoted much effort to maintaining high standards of literacy among themselves, the main purpose being to let any Jew read the Hebrew Bible and the accompanying religious works in the original (see rabbinic literature, Codes of Jewish law, The Jewish Bookshelf). It is interesting to note that the languages that the Jews adopted from their adopted nations, namely Ladino and Yiddish were not directly connected to Hebrew (the former being based on Spanish and Arabic borrowings, latter being a remote dialect of Middle High German), however, both were written from right to left using the Hebrew script. Hebrew was also used as a language of communication among Jews from different countries, particularly for the purpose of international trade.

Related Topics:
Hebrew Bible - Rabbinic literature - Codes of Jewish law - The Jewish Bookshelf - Ladino - Yiddish - Middle High German

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The most important contribution to preserving traditional Hebrew pronunciation in this period was that of scholars called Masoretes (from masoret meaning "tradition"), who from about the seventh to the tenth centuries CE devised detailed markings to indicate vowels, stress, and cantillation (recitation methods). The original Hebrew texts used only consonants, and later some consonants were used to indicate long vowels. By the time of the Masoretes this text was considered too sacred to be altered, so all their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the letters.

Related Topics:
Masoretes - Cantillation

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Revival

The revival of Hebrew as a mother tongue was initiated by the efforts of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922) (אליעזר בן־יהודה). He joined the Jewish national movement and in 1881 emigrated to Eretz Israel, then a province of the Ottoman Empire. Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora "shtetl" lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop tools for making the literary and liturgical language into everyday spoken language.

Related Topics:
Mother tongue - Eliezer Ben-Yehuda - 1858 - 1922 - Jewish national movement - 1881 - Eretz Israel - Ottoman Empire - Diaspora - Shtetl - Literary - Liturgical language - Spoken language

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However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been replaced in Eastern Europe by more modern grammar and style, in the writings of people like Achad Ha-Am and others. His organizational efforts and involvement with the establishment of schools and the writing of textbooks pushed the vernacularization activity into a gradually accepted movement. It was not, however, until the 1904-1905 "Second aliyah" that Hebrew had caught real momentum in Ottoman Palestine with the new and better organized enterprises set forth by the new group of immigrants. When the British Mandate of Palestine recognized Hebrew as one of the country's three official languages (English, Arabic, and Hebrew, in 1922), its new formal status contributed to its diffusion.

Related Topics:
Eastern Europe - Achad Ha-Am - Second aliyah - British Mandate of Palestine

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While many saw his work as fanciful or even blasphemous http://www.jewishmag.com/43mag/ben-yehuda/ben-yehuda.htm, many soon understood the need for a common language amongst Jews of pre-state Israel who at the turn of the 20th century were arriving in large numbers from diverse countries and speaking different languages. A Committee of the Hebrew Language was established. Later it became the Academy of the Hebrew Language, an organization that exists today. The results of his and the Committee's work were published in a dictionary (The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew). Ben-Yehuda's work fell on fertile ground, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the Jewish population of both Ottoman and British pre-State Israel.

Related Topics:
20th century - Academy of the Hebrew Language

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Modern Hebrew

Ben-Yehuda based Modern Hebrew on Biblical Hebrew. Often new words were coined by applying unused word-patterns to existing roots (Biblical k-t-v, "write," gave rise to modern Hebrew hikhtiv, "dictated," and hitkatev, "corresponded.") When this did not suffice and the Committee set out to invent a new word for a certain concept, it searched through the Biblical word-indexes and foreign dictionaries, particularly Arabic. While Ben-Yehuda preferred Semitic roots to European ones, the abundance of European Hebrew speakers led to the introduction of numerous foreign words. Other changes which had taken place as Hebrew came back to life were the systematization of the grammar - the Biblical syntax was sometimes limited and ambiguous -- and the adoption of standard Western punctuation.

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Modern Hebrew shows influences from Russian (for example, the Russian suffix -acia is used in nouns where English has the suffix -ation); German (particularly in combination words like "tapuakh-adama," meaning potato (German Erdapfel , earth-apple), "iton" (German Zeitung, news-ity, news-paper) or "dme-shtia," meaning tip (German Trinkgeld , drink-money). English has been a very strong influence, both from British influence during the period of the Mandate and American influence in the present day. Finally, Arabic, being the language of numerous Mizrahic and Sephardic Jewish immigrants from Arab countries as well as of the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, has also had an important influence on Hebrew, especially in slang (for example, "sababa", meaning "excellent", or "yalla", meaning "come on.")

Related Topics:
Russian - English - Mizrahic - Sephardic - Arab - Palestinian - Israeli Arab

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Modern Hebrew is printed with a script known as "square". It is the same script, ultimately derived from Aramaic, that was used for copying of Bible books in Hebrew for two thousand years. This script also has a cursive version, which is used for handwriting.

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Hebrew has been the language of numerous poets, which include Rachel, Hayim Nahman Bialik, Shaul Tchernihovsky, Lea Goldberg, Avraham Shlonsky and Natan Alterman. Hebrew was also the language of hundreds of authors, one of whom is the Nobel Prize laureate Shmuel Yosef Agnon.

Related Topics:
Rachel - Hayim Nahman Bialik - Shaul Tchernihovsky - Lea Goldberg - Avraham Shlonsky - Natan Alterman - Nobel Prize - Shmuel Yosef Agnon

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