Hebrew
Language - Overview
Hebrew language
The Modern Hebrew language is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic
language family. The core of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah (which
Christianity and Judaism traditionally hold to have been first recorded
in the time of Moses 3,300 years ago), is written in (Biblical)
Classical Hebrew. Jews have always called it the לשון הקודש Lashon ha-Kodesh
("The Sacred Language") as the scriptures written in this language were
considered sacred. After the first Destruction of Jerusalem by the
Babylonians in 586 BCE, most scholars agree that the kind of Hebrew
prevalent in the Hebrew Bible was replaced in daily use by Mishnaic
Hebrew and a local version of Aramaic. After the depletion of the Jewish
population of parts of Roman occupied Judea, it is believed that Hebrew
gradually ceased to be a spoken language roughly around 200 CE, but has
stayed as the major written language throughout the centuries. Not only
religious, but texts for a large variety of purposes: letters and
contracts, science, philosophy, medicine, poetry, protocols of
courts—all resorted to Hebrew, which thus adapted itself to various new
fields and terminologies by borrowings and new inventions.
Hebrew was revitalized as a spoken language during the late 19th and
early 20th century as Modern Hebrew, replacing a host of languages
spoken by the Jews at that time, such as Arabic, Judezmo (also called
Ladino), Yiddish, Russian, and other languages of the Jewish diaspora as
the spoken language of the majority of the Jewish people living in
Israel.
Modern Hebrew became an official language in British Palestine in 1921,
and the primary official language of the State of Israel, (Arabic
maintained its official language status). The Hebrew name for the
language is עברית, or Ivrit (pronounced like "eev-REET", or /iv.'rit/ in
the IPA).
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.
Hebrew strongly resembles Aramaic and to a lesser extent South-Central
Arabic, sharing many linguistic features with them.
Early history
Jewish languages
Hebrew
Biblical · Mishnaic
Ashkenazi · Sephardi
Yemenite · Sanaani
Tiberian · Mizrahi
Aramaic
Bijil Neo-Aramaic · Hulaulá
Lishana Deni · Lishan Didan
Lishanid Noshan
Other Afro-Asiatic
Judeo-Arabic · Kayla
Judeo-Berber
Yiddish
National Yiddish Book Center
Yiddish Typewriter
Yiddish Theater
Yeshivish · Yinglish
Judeo-Romance languages
Catalanic · Italkian
Ladino · Judeo-Latin
Shuadit · Zarphatic
Judeo-Portuguese
Other Indo-European
Yevanic · Knaanic
Bukhori · Juhuri
Judeo-Hamedani · Dzhidi
Altaic
Krymchak · Karaim
Dravidian
Judeo-Malayalam
Kartvelic
Gruzinic
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.
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).
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 Canaanite document
is the famous Moabite Stone; 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.
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.
The formal language of the 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.
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.
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.
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
(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.
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 too sacred to be altered, so
all their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the
letters.
Revival
The revival of Hebrew as a mother tongue was initiated by the efforts of
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922) (אליעזר בן־יהודה). Ben-Yehuda, previously
an ardent revolutionary in Tsarist Russia, had joined the Jewish
national movement and immigrated to Palestine in 1881 (parts of which
later became the modern state of Israel, which now comprises much of the
land held by ancient Israel). Motivated by the surrounding ideals of
renovation and rejection of the diaspora lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out
to develop tools for vernacularizing the literary language for everyday
communication. 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 Immigration Movement" 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 government 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.
While many saw his work as fanciful or even blasphemous, many soon
understood the need for a common language amongst Jews of pre-state
Israel who at the turn of the 19th century were arriving in large
numbers from diverse countries with many 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 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 of both Ottoman and British pre-State Israel.
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, 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.
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) 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.")
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.
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.
Dialects
According to Ethnologue, dialects of Hebrew include Standard Hebrew
(General Israeli, Europeanized Hebrew), Oriental Hebrew (Arabized
Hebrew, Yemenite Hebrew).
In practice, there is also Ashkenazi Hebrew, still widely used in
Ashkenazi Jewish religious services and studies in Israel and abroad. It
was influenced by the Yiddish language.
Sephardi Hebrew language is the basis of Standard Hebrew and not all
that different from it, although traditionally it has had a greater
range of phonemes. 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
as their daily language. Phonologically, this "dialect" may most
accurately be described as an amalgam of pronunciations preserving
Sephardic vowel sounds and Ashkenazic consonant sounds—its recurring
feature being simplification of differences among a wide array of
pronunciations. This simplifying tendency also accounts for the collapse
of the Ashkenazic /t/ and /s/ pronunciations of unaspirated and
aspirated ת into the single phoneme /t/. Most Sephardic dialects
differentiated between these two pronunciations as /t/ and /θ/. Within
Israel, the pronunciation of "Standard Hebrew", however, more often
reflects the national or ethnic origin of the individual speaker, rather
than the specific recommendations of the Academy. For this reason, over
half the population pronounces ר as /ʀ/, (a uvular trill, as in Yiddish
and some varieties of German) or as /ʁ/ (a uvular fricative, as in
French or many varieties of German), rather than as /r/, an apical
trill, as in Spanish. The pronunciation of this phoneme is often used as
a determinant among Israelis when ascertaining the national origin of
perceived foreigners.
Languages strongly influenced by Hebrew
Yiddish, Ladino, Karaim, and Judæo-Arabic were all highly influenced by
Hebrew. Although none are completely derived from Hebrew, they all make
extensive use of Hebrew loanwords.
Sounds
The Hebrew language has been used primarily for liturgical purposes for
most of the past two millennia. As a consequence, its pronunciation has
been strongly influenced by the vernacular of each individual Jewish
community. In contrast to the varied development of these pronunciations
has been the relatively rapid development of Modern Israeli Hebrew.
Grammar
Hebrew grammar is mostly analytical, expressing such forms as dative,
ablative, and accusative using prepositional particles rather than
grammatical cases. However inflection does play an important role in the
formation of the verbs, nouns and the genitive construct, which is
called "smikhut". Words in smikhut are often combined with hyphens.
Writing system
Modern Hebrew is written from right to left using the Hebrew alphabet.
Modern scripts are based on the "square" letter form. A similar system
is used in handwriting, but the letters tend to be more circular in
their character, and sometimes vary markedly from their printed
equivalents. Biblical Hebrew text contains nothing but consonants and
spaces, and most modern Hebrew texts contain only consonants, spaces and
western-style punctuation. A pointing system (nikud, from the root word
meaning "points" or "dots") developed around the 5th Century C.E. is
used to indicate vowels and syllabic stresses in some religious books,
and is almost always found in modern poetry, children's literature, and
texts for beginning students of Hebrew. The system is also used
sparingly to avoid certain ambiguities of meaning — such as when context
is insufficient to distinguish between two identically spelled words —
and in the transliteration of foreign names.
All Hebrew consonant phonemes are represented by a single letter.
Although a single letter might represent two phonemes — the letter
"bet," for example, represents both /b/ and /v/ — the two sounds are
always related "hard" (plosive) and "soft" (fricative) forms, their
pronunciaton being very often determined by context. In fully pointed
texts, the hard form normally has a dot, known as a dagesh, in its
center.
The letters hei, vav and yud can represent consonantal sounds (/h/, /v/
and /y/, respectively) or serve as a markers for vowels. In the latter
case, these letters are called "emot qria" ("matres lectionis" in Latin,
"mothers of reading" in English). The letter hei at the end of a word
usually indicates a final /a/, which in turn is usually indicative of
feminine gender. Vav may represent /o/ or /u/, and yod may represent /i/.
There is no consonantal marker for /e/. In some modern Israeli texts,
the letter alef is used to indicate long /a/ sounds in foreign names,
particularly those of Arabic origin.
Terminal syllabic emphasis is most common. Fully pointed texts will note
variations with a vertical line placed underneath the first consonant of
the emphasized syllable, to the left of the vowel mark if there is one.
Romanization
The Hebrew language is normally written in the Hebrew alphabet. Due to
publishing difficulties, and the unfamiliarity of many readers with the
alphabet, there are many ways of transcribing Hebrew into Roman letters.
The most accurate method is the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is
used (in a simplified ASCII form) in the section concerned with
Phonology, to describe the sounds of the Hebrew language. However, the
IPA is not well known, and is often considered cumbersome for
transcribing pronunciations for a general audience. Therefore this
article uses a different system to express Hebrew pronunciation, and at
least some orthographic peculiarities. The system comes down to the
following:
* The letter tzadi (צ) is transcribed by "c" so that it could be
distinguished from other combinations of /t/ and /s/, although "ts" or "tz"
is usually acceptable.
* The letter ‘ayin (ע) is transcribed ', the same as alef. In word-final
position, this phoneme is always preceded by the vowel /a/.
* The letter shin (ש) is transcribed by "sh".
* Both the letter tav (ת) and the letter tet (ט) are transcribed by "t".
* The letter he (ה) at the end of a word, in those cases where it marks
feminine gender, is transcribed by "ah" (it is read /a/).
* The letter qof (ק) is transcribed by "q" (it is pronounced /k/ by many
speakers).
* Single-letter prepositions and the definite article are separated with
a dash (-) from their subject.
* Stresses and schwas are not marked.
* The vowels are always written.
* The letter yod is usually transcribed by "y".
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language
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