Hebrew language

Hebrew is the primary official language of the state of Israel, (Arabic also has official language status). The Hebrew name for the language is עברית, or `Ivrit (pronounced eevREET [ivr\\it]).

Hebrew (עברית [‘Ivrit])
Spoken in:	Israel
Region:	Israel and other countries
Total speakers:	Over 6 Million, as all Israeli Jewish citizens as well as its Arabs speak it
Ranking:	not in top 100
Genetic classification:	Afro-Asiatic  Semitic   Central    South     Canaanite      Hebrew
Official status
Official language of:	Israel
Regulated by:	Academy of the Hebrew Language
Language codes
ISO 639-1	he
ISO 639-2	heb
SIL	HBR

Table of contents

1 History 1.1 Early history 1.2 Later history 1.3 Revival 1.4 Modern Hebrew 2 Classification 3 Geographic distribution 3.5 Official status 3.6 Dialects 3.7 Languages strongly influenced by Hebrew 4 Sounds 4.8 Vowels 4.9 Consonants 4.10 Historical sound changes 5 Grammar 5.11 Verbs 5.11.1 Person, Number, and Gender 5.11.2 Tense 5.11.3 Mood and Voice 5.11.4 Verb classes 5.11.5 Participles and Gerunds 5.12 The Noun 5.12.6 Gender 5.12.7 Number 5.12.8 Possession 5.12.9 Forming Words 6 Writing system 6.13 Romanization 7 Examples 8 See also 9 External links

History

Early history

Hebrew is an Afro-Asiatic language. This language family probably originated in northeast Africa, and began to diverge around the 8th millennium BC, though there is much debate about the actual date. (Although this theory is espoused by most archeologists and linguists, it is at odds with the traditional reading of the Torah) Speakers of Proto-Afro-Asiatic spread northeast, eventually reaching the Middle East.

At the end of the 3rd millennium BC 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 BC, 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 Greekss and Etruscanss later became the Roman script used today in almost all European languages. 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).

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. Less ancient samples of Old Hebrew include the tablets found near Lachish and the famous Siloam Inscription which describe events preceding the final capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity of 586 BC.

The most famous work originally written in Hebrew is the Bible. Although the texts of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) were written down relatively late, perhaps as late as 500 BC, it is apparent that some of them date back to as early as the 9th century BC. Our knowledge of the older forms of the Hebrew language is limited due to the editing that the texts must have undergone in the process of being written down.

The formal language of the Babylonian Empire was Aramaic (its name is either derived from "Aram Naharayim", Mesopotamia, or from "Aram," Canaanite for "highland," 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.

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 A.D. 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.

Later history

Hebrew was not used as a spoken language for roughly 2300 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. 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.

The most important contribution to preserving traditional Hebrew pronunciation in this period was that of scholars called Masoretes (from Masoret '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 too sacred to be altered, so all their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the letters.

Revival

While at first many considered his work as fanciful, the need for a common language was soon understood by many. A Committee of the Hebrew Language was established. Later it became the Academy of the Hebrew Language, an organization that still exists today. The results of his work and the Committee's 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 in Palestine.

Modern Hebrew

Russian influence is particularly evident in Hebrew. For example, the Russian suffix -acia is used in nouns where English has the suffix -ation. It is so both in direct borrowings from Russian, for example "industrializacia", industrialization, and in words that do not exist in Russian (thus, colloquial English "cannibalization" turns into Hebrew "canibalizatcia"). English influence is also very strong, perhaps due to the thirty years of British rule under the Mandate and the dense ties with the United States. Yiddish influence is also found, in some diminutives for instance. 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.

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.

Modern Hebrew has a rich jargon, which is a direct result of the flourishing youth culture. The two main features of this jargon are the Arabic borrowings (for example, "sababa", "excellent", or "kus-emmek", an expression of strong dissatisfaction which is extremely obscene both in Arabic and in Modern Hebrew), and the obfuscated idioms.

Due to the relatively small size of the vocabulary, numerous foreign borrowings and simple inflexional rules, Hebrew is an easy language to learn. Foreign accents are usually treated with patience by Israeli Hebrew speakers.

Hebrew has been the language of numerous poets, which include Rahel, 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.

Classification

Geographic distribution

Official status

Dialects

In practice, there is also Ashkenazi Hebrew, still widely used in Ashkenazi Jewish services and studies in Israel and abroad. It was influenced by the Yiddish language.

Sephardi Hebrew is the basis of Standard Hebrew and not all that different from it, but traditionally it had a slightly bigger variety of pronunciation. It was influenced by the Ladino language.

Mizrahi (Oriental) Hebrew is actually a collection of dialects spoken liturgically by Jews in various parts of the Arab and Islamic world. It was influenced by the Arabic language.

Nearly every immigrant to Israel is encouraged to adopt Standard Hebrew and its nuances as their daily language. As a dialect, Standard Hebrew was originally based on Sephardi Hebrew, but has been further constrained to Ashkenazi phonology to form a unique modern dialect.

Languages strongly influenced by Hebrew

Sounds

Vowels

Hebrew also has dagesh, a strengthening. There are two kinds of strengthenings: light (qal, known also as dagesh lene) and heavy (khazaq or dagesh fortis). There are two sub-categories of the heavy dagesh: structural heavy (khazaq tavniti) and complementing heavy (khazaq mashlim). The light affects the phonemes /v/ /g/ /d/ /kh/ /f/ /t/ in the beginning of a word, or after a resting schwa. Structural heavy emphases belong to certain vowel patterns (mishkalim and binyanim; see the section on grammar below). Complementing strengthening is added when vowel assimilation takes place. As mentioned before, the emphasis influences which of a pair of allophones is pronounced. Interestingly enough, historical evidence indicates that /g/, /d/ and /t/ used to have strengthened versions of their own, however they had disappeared from virtually all the spoken dialects of Hebrew. All other consonants except aspirates may receive an emphasis, but their sound will not change.

Hebrew has two kinds of stress (taa'm): on the last syllable (milra' ) and on the penultimate syllable (the one preceding the last, mile'l). The former is more frequent. Specific rules connect the location of the stress with the length of the vowels in the last syllable; however due to the fact that Modern Hebrew does not distinguish between long and short vowels, these rules are often ignored in everyday speech. Interestingly enough, the rules that specify the vowel length are different for verbs and nouns, which influences the stress; thus the mile'l-stressed ókhel (="food") and milra' -stressed okhèl (="eats", masculine) are written in the same way. Little ambiguity exists, however, due to nouns and verbs having incompatible roles in normal sentences. This is, however, also true in English, in, for example, the English word "conduct," in its nominal and verbal forms.

One-letter words are always attached to the following word. Such words include: the definite article; prepositions b (="in"), m (="from"), l (="to"); conjunctions sh (="that"), k (="as", "like"), v (="and"). The vowel that follows the letter thus attached depends in general on the beginning of the next word and the presence of a definite article which may be swallowed by the one-letter word. The rules for the prepositions are as follows: in most cases they are followed by a moving schwa, and for that reason they're pronounced as be, me and le. If a preposition is put before a word which begins with a moving schwa, then the preposition takes the vowel /i/. For example, *be-khlal becomes bi-khlal (="in general"). If l or b are followed by the definite article ha, their vowel changes to /a/. Thus *be-ha-matos becomes ba-matos (="in the plane"). However it does not happen to m, therefore me-ha-matos is a valid form, which means "from the plane".

* indicates that the given example is not grammatically correct