Modern Hebrew and Arabic are the official languages of the State of Israel, while pre-revival forms of Hebrew are used for prayer or study in Jewish and Samaritan communities around the world today the latter group utilizes the Samaritan dialect as their liturgical tongue. After Israel, the United States has the second-largest Hebrew-speaking population, with approximately 220,000 fluent speakers (see Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans). With the rise of Zionism in the 19th century, the Hebrew language experienced a full-scale revival as a spoken and literary language, after which it became the main language of the Yishuv in Palestine, and subsequently the lingua franca of the State of Israel with official status.Īccording to Ethnologue, Hebrew was spoken by five million people worldwide in 1998 in 2013, it was spoken by over nine million people worldwide. The first dated book printed in Hebrew was published by Abraham Garton in Reggio ( Calabria, Italy) in 1475. Hebrew survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and Jewish poetic literature. Aramaic and, to a lesser extent, Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among societal elites and immigrants. Hebrew ceased to be a regular spoken language sometime between 200 and 400 CE, as it declined in the aftermath of the unsuccessful Bar Kokhba revolt, which was carried out against the Roman Empire by the Jews of Judaea. Mishnah Gittin 9:8 refers to the language as Ivrit, meaning Hebrew however, Mishnah Megillah refers to the language as Ashurit, meaning Assyrian, which is derived from the name of the alphabet used, in contrast to Ivrit, meaning the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. 'the language of Judah') or Səpaṯ Kəna'an ( transl. The language was not referred to by the name Hebrew in the Bible, but as Yehudit ( transl. 'the holy tongue' or 'the tongue holiness') since ancient times. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Lashon Hakodesh ( לְשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶש, lit. Nearly all of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew, with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, during the time of the Babylonian captivity. The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date back to the 10th century BCE. It is the only Canaanite language, as well as one of only two Northwest Semitic languages, with the other being Aramaic, still spoken today. The language was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century, and is the only successful large-scale example of linguistic revival. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language until after 200 CE and as the liturgical language of Judaism (since the Second Temple period) and Samaritanism. Hebrew ( Hebrew alphabet: עִבְרִית, ʿĪvrīt, pronounced ⓘ or ⓘ Samaritan script: ࠏࠨࠁࠬࠓࠪࠉࠕ ʿÎbrit Paleo-Hebrew script: □□□□□) is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. The word IVRIT ("Hebrew") written in modern Hebrew language (top) and in Paleo-Hebrew alphabet (bottom) For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. This article contains IPA phonetic symbols.
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