Hebrew ( , , ) is a
Semitic language of the
Afro-Asiatic language family.
Culturally, it is considered a
Jewish
language.
Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more
than seven million people in Israel
while
Classical Hebrew has been used for
prayer or study in Jewish communities around
the world for over two thousand years. It is one of the
official
languages of Israel,
along with
Arabic. Ancient Hebrew is
also the liturgical tongue of the
Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or
Palestinian Arabic is their vernacular,
though today about 700 Samaritans remain. As a foreign language it
is studied mostly by Jews and students of Judaism and Israel,
archaeologists and linguists specializing in the
Middle East and its civilizations, by
theologians, and in Christian seminaries.
The modern word "Hebrew" is derived from the word "ivri" which in
turn may be based upon the root "`avar" ( ) meaning "to cross
over". The word is identical in Ancient South Arabic (Sabaean
dialect)
BR and also has the dual meaning of "to cross
over" (Leeman 2005:95-96, 2009:2; Biella 1982:350).
The related name Eber occurs in
Genesis 10:21 and possibly means
"the one who traverses". In the Bible
"Hebrew" is called ( ) because Judah ( ) was the surviving
kingdom at the time of the quotation, late 8th century BCE (Is 36,
2 Kings 18). In Isaiah 19:18, it is also
called the "Language of Canaan" (
The core of the
Tanakh (the
Hebrew Bible) is written in
Classical Hebrew, and much of its present
form is specifically the dialect of
Biblical Hebrew that scholars believe
flourished around the 6th century BC, around the time of the
Babylonian exile. For this
reason, Hebrew has been referred to by
Jews as (
), "The
Holy Tongue", since ancient
times.
History
As a language,
Hebrew belongs to the
Canaanite group of languages. In turn
the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic
family of languages.
Hebrew (Israel) and
Moabite (Jordan
) are
Southern Canaanite while Phoenician (Lebanon
) is Northern
Canaanite. Canaanite is closely related to
Aramaic and to a lesser extent
South-Central
Arabic.
Whereas Canaanite
languages became extinct, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in
Israel from the 10th century BCE until
the Babylonian exile.
Around the
6th century BC, the Neo-Babylonian Empire
conquered the ancient Kingdom of
Judah, destroying much of Jerusalem
and exiling its population far to the East in
Babylon
. During the
Babylonian captivity, many
Israelites were enslaved within the
Babylonian Empire and learned the closely
related Semitic language of their captors,
Aramaic.
The Babylonians had taken mainly the
governing classes of Israel while leaving behind in Israel presumably
more-compliant farmers and laborers to work the land. Thus
for a significant period, the
Jewish elite
became influenced by
Aramaic. (see below,
Aramaic spoken among
Israelites).
After
Cyrus the
Great conquered Babylon, he
released
the Jewish people from captivity. The King of Kings or Great
King of
Persia, later gave the
Israelites permission to return. Hebrew came to be spoken alongside
new dialects of Hebrew and a local version of
Aramaic. Yet, Aramaic represented the hated
language of slavery, conquest, and occupation, while Hebrew
remained the language of Israel's history and national pride.
Preserved largely by the remnant in Israel proper, Hebrew continued
to be a thriving language until shortly before the Byzantine
era.
From the beginning of the 1st millennium Hebrew continued in use as
a religious and literary language until the 19th century, when it
was revived as a spoken language. After the 2nd century CE when the
Roman Empire exiled most of the Jewish
population of Jerusalem following the
Bar Kokhba revolt, the Israelites adapted
to the societies in which they found themselves, yet letters,
contracts, commerce, science, philosophy, medicine, poetry, and
laws continued to be written in Hebrew, which adapted by borrowing
and inventing terms.
Hebrew persevered along the ages as the main language for written
purposes by all Jewish communities around the world for a large
range of uses (poetry, philosophy, science and medicine, commerce,
daily correspondence and contracts, in addition to liturgy). This
meant not only that well-educated Jews in all parts of the world
could correspond in a mutually intelligible language, and that
books and legal documents published or written in any part of the
world could be read by Jews in all other parts, but that an
educated Jew could travel and converse with Jews in distant places,
just as priests and other educated Christians could once converse
in Latin. It has been 'revived' several times as a literary
language, and most significantly by the
Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement of early and
mid-19th century. Near the end of that century the
Jewish activist
Eliezer
Ben-Yehuda, owing to the ideology of the national revival
(
Hibbat Tziyon, later
Zionism),
began reviving Hebrew as a modern spoken language. Eventually, as a
result of the local movement he created, but more significantly as
a result of the new groups of immigrants known under the name of
the
Second Aliyah, it
replaced a score of languages spoken by Jews at that time. Those
languages were Jewish dialects such as
Ladino (also called Judezmo),
Yiddish,
Judeo-Arabic, and
Bukharian language, or local languages
spoken in the
Jewish diaspora such
as
Russian,
Persian, and
Arabic.
The major result of the literary work of the Hebrew intellectuals
along the 19th century was a lexical modernization of Hebrew. New
words and expressions were adapted as
neologisms from the large corpus of Hebrew
writings since the Hebrew Bible, or borrowed from Arabic (mainly by
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda) and Aramaic. Many new words were either
borrowed from or coined after European languages, especially
English, Russian, German, and French.
Modern Hebrew became
an official language in British-ruled Palestine in 1921 (along with
English and Arabic), and then in 1948 became an official language
of the newly declared State of
Israel. Hebrew is the most widely spoken language
in Israel today.
Origins
Hebrew is a
Semitic language and as
such a member of the larger
Afro-Asiatic phylum.
Within Semitic, the
Northwest Semitic languages
formed around the 3rd millennium
BC, grouped
along with the
Arabic languages as
Central Semitic. The
Canaanite languages are a group within
Northwest Semitic, emerging in the 2nd millennium
BC in the
Levant, gradually
separating from
Aramaic and
Ugaritic.
Within the Canaanite group, Hebrew belongs to the sub-group also
containing
Edomite,
Ammonite and
Moabite. Another Canaanite sub-group
contains
Phoenician and its
descendant
Punic.
Gezer calendar and other archaic inscriptions
The first written evidence of distinctive Hebrew, the
Gezer calendar, dates back to the 10th
century BC at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, the
traditional time of the reign of
David and
Solomon. Classified as Archaic Biblical
Hebrew, the calendar 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 later Hebrew spelling
requires it.
In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered what
he says is the oldest known Hebrew inscription. A 3,000-year-old
pottery shard bearing five lines of faded characters were found in
the ruins of an ancient town south of Jerusalem. Garfinkel noted
that the find suggests Biblical accounts of the ancient Israelite
kingdom of David could have been based on written texts.
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
Egyptian hieroglyphs, 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 Archaic Hebrew include the ostraka found
near Lachish
which
describe events preceding the final capture of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadnezzar and the
Babylonian captivity of 586 BC.
Classical Hebrew
In its widest sense,
Classical Hebrew means the spoken
language of ancient Israel flourishing between the 10th century
BC and the turn of the 4th century
CE. It comprises several evolving and overlapping
dialects. The phases of Classical Hebrew are often named after
important literary works associated with them.
- Archaic Biblical
Hebrew from the 10th to the 6th century BC, corresponding to the Monarchic Period until the
Babylonian Exile and represented by certain texts in the Hebrew
Bible (Tanach), notably the Song of Moses
(Exodus 15) and the Song of Deborah (Judges 5). Also called Old
Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew. It was written in a form of the Canaanite script. (A script descended
from this is still used by the Samaritans, see Samaritan Hebrew language.)
- Biblical Hebrew
around the 6th century BC, corresponding to the
Babylonian Exile and represented by the bulk of the Hebrew Bible
that attains much of its present form around this time. Also called
Classical Biblical Hebrew (or Classical Hebrew in the narrowest
sense).
- Late Biblical
Hebrew, from the 6th to the 4th century BC, that corresponds to the Persian Period and is
represented by certain texts in the Hebrew
Bible, notably the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Basically
similar to Classical Biblical Hebrew, apart from a few foreign
words adopted for mainly governmental terms, and some syntactical
innovations such as the use of the particle shel (of,
belonging to). It adopted the Imperial
Aramaic script.
- Dead Sea Scroll
Hebrew from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century CE, corresponding to the Hellenistic and Roman
Periods before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and
represented by the Qumran Scrolls that form most (but not all) of
the Dead Sea Scrolls. Commonly abbreviated as DSS Hebrew, also called Qumran Hebrew. The Imperial Aramaic script of
the earlier scrolls in the 3rd century BCE evolved into the Hebrew square script of the later
scrolls in the 1st century CE, also known
as ketav Ashuri (Assyrian script), still in use
today.
- Mishnaic Hebrew
from the 1st to the 3rd or 4th century CE, corresponding to the Roman Period after the
destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and represented by the bulk
of the Mishnah and Tosefta within the Talmud and
by the Dead Sea Scrolls, notably the Bar Kokhba Letters and the
Copper Scroll. Also called Tannaitic
Hebrew or Early Rabbinic Hebrew.
Sometimes the above phases of spoken Classical Hebrew are
simplified into "Biblical Hebrew" (including several dialects from
the tenth century
BC to 2nd century
BC and extant in certain Dead Sea Scrolls) and "Mishnaic
Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 3rd century
BC to the 3rd century
CE and extant in certain other Dead Sea Scrolls).
However, today, most Hebrew linguists classify Dead Sea Scroll
Hebrew as a set of dialects evolving out of Late Biblical Hebrew
and into Mishnaic Hebrew, thus including elements from both but
remaining distinct from either. By the start of the Byzantine
Period in the 4th century
CE, Classical
Hebrew ceases as a regularly spoken language, roughly a century
after the publication of the Mishnah, apparently declining since
the aftermath of the catastrophic Bar Kokhba War around 135
CE.
Mishnah and Talmud
The term generally refers to the Hebrew dialects found in the
Talmud , excepting quotations from the Hebrew
Bible.
The dialects organize into Mishnaic Hebrew (also called Tannaitic
Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or Mishnaic Hebrew I), which was a spoken language, and Amoraic Hebrew (also called Late Rabbinic Hebrew or
Mishnaic Hebrew II), which was a literary language.
The earlier section of the Talmud is the
Mishnah that was published around 200
CE and was written in the earlier Mishnaic
dialect. The dialect is also found in certain Dead Sea Scrolls.
Mishnaic Hebrew is considered to be one of the dialects of
Classical Hebrew that functioned as a living language in the land
of Israel.
A transitional form of the language occurs in the other works of
Tannaitic literature dating from the century beginning with the
completion of the Mishnah. These include the
halachic Midrashim
(
Sifra,
Sifre,
Mechilta etc.) and the expanded collection of
Mishnah-related material known as the
Tosefta . The Talmud contains excerpts from these
works, as well as further Tannaitic material not attested
elsewhere; the generic term for these passages is
Baraitot. The dialect of all these works is very
similar to Mishnaic Hebrew.
About a century after the publication of the Mishnah, Mishnaic
Hebrew fell into disuse as a spoken language. The later section of
the Talmud, the
Gemara , generally comments
on the Mishnah and Baraitot in Aramaic. Nevertheless, Hebrew
survived as a liturgical and literary language in the form of later
Amoraic Hebrew, which sometimes occurs in the
text of the Gemara.
Medieval Hebrew
After the Talmud, various regional literary dialects of
Medieval Hebrew evolved.
The most important is
Tiberian Hebrew or Masoretic
Hebrew, a local dialect of Tiberias
in Galilee that became the
standard for vocalizing the Hebrew
Bible and thus still influences all other regional dialects of
Hebrew. This Tiberian Hebrew from the 7th to 10th century
CE is sometimes called "Biblical Hebrew"
because it is used to pronounce the Hebrew Bible; however properly
it should be distinguished from the historical Biblical Hebrew of
the 6th century
BCE, whose original
pronunciation must be reconstructed.
Tiberian Hebrew incorporates the remarkable scholarship of the
Masoretes (from
masoret meaning
"tradition"), who added
vowel points and
grammar points to the Hebrew letters to
preserve much earlier features of Hebrew, for use in chanting the
Hebrew Bible. The Masoretes inherited a biblical text whose letters
were considered too sacred to be altered, so their markings were in
the form of pointing in and around the letters. The
Syriac script, precursor to the
Arabic script, also developed vowel pointing
systems around this time. The
Aleppo
Codex, a Hebrew Bible with the Masoretic pointing, was written
in the 10th century likely in Tiberias and survives to this day. It
is perhaps the most important Hebrew manuscript in existence.
In the
Golden age
of Jewish culture in Spain important work was done by
grammarians in explaining the grammar and vocabulary of Biblical
Hebrew; much of this was based on the work of the
grammarians of
Classical Arabic. Important Hebrew
grammarians were
Judah ben David
Hayyuj,
Jonah ibn Janah and
later (in Provence)
David Kimhi. A great
deal of poetry was written, by poets such as
Dunash ben Labrat,
Solomon ibn Gabirol,
Judah ha-Levi and the two
Ibn Ezras, in a "purified" Hebrew based on the work
of these grammarians, and in Arabic quantitative or strophic
metres. This literary Hebrew was later used by Italian Jewish
poets.
The need to express scientific and philosophical concepts from
Classical Greek and
Medieval Arabic motivated Medieval
Hebrew to borrow terminology and grammar from these other
languages, or to coin equivalent terms from existing Hebrew roots,
giving rise to a distinct style of philosophical Hebrew. This is
used in the translations made by the
Ibn
Tibbon family. (Original Jewish philosophical works were
usually written in Arabic.)
Another important influence was
Maimonides, who developed a simple style based on
Mishnaic Hebrew for use in his law
code, the
Mishneh Torah. Subsequent
rabbinic literature is written in a blend between this style and
the Aramaized
Rabbinic Hebrew of the
Talmud.
Liturgical use
Hebrew has always been used as the language of prayer and study,
and the following pronunciation systems are found.
Ashkenazi Hebrew, originating in
Central and Eastern Europe, is still widely used in Ashkenazi
Jewish religious services and studies in Israel and abroad,
particularly in the
Haredi and other
Orthodox communities. It was influenced by
the
Yiddish language.
Sephardi Hebrew is the traditional
pronunciation of the
Spanish
and Portuguese Jews and
Sephardi
Jews in the countries of the former
Ottoman Empire. This pronunciation, in the
form used by the Jerusalem Sephardic community, is the basis of the
Hebrew phonology of Israeli native
speakers. It was influenced by the
Ladino
language.
Mizrahi Hebrew is actually a
collection of dialects spoken liturgically by Jews in various parts
of the
Arab and
Islamic
world. It was possibly influenced by the
Aramaic and
Arabic languages, and in some cases by
Sephardi Hebrew, although some
linguists maintain that it is the direct heir of
Biblical Hebrew and thus represents the true
dialect of Hebrew. The same claim is sometimes made for
Yemenite Hebrew or
Temanit, which
differs from other Mizrahi dialects by having a radically different
vowel system, and distinguishing between different diacritically
marked consonants that are pronounced identically in other dialects
(for example gimel and "ghimel".)
These pronunciations are still used in synagogue ritual and
religious study, in Israel and elsewhere, mostly by people who are
not native speakers of Hebrew, though some traditionalist Israelis
are bi-dialectal.
Many synagogues in the diaspora, even though Ashkenazi by rite and
by ethnic composition, have adopted the "Sephardic" pronunciation
in deference to Israeli Hebrew. However, in many British and
American schools and synagogues, this pronunciation retains several
elements of its Ashkenazi substrate, especially the distinction
between
tsere and
segol.
Hebrew in Judaism
According to Jewish tradition, Hebrew was the language of the
creation. Likewise, Hebrew was the one language spoken by the
united mankind before the dispersion connected with the
Tower of Babel. According to
Jewish esoteric teachings, the Hebrew letters are
the lifeforce of all things created, determining their
essence.
Modern Hebrew
Development
In the Modern Period, from the 19th century onward, the literary
Hebrew tradition as pronounced in Jerusalem revived as the spoken
language of modern Israel, called variously
Israeli
Hebrew,
Modern Israeli Hebrew,
Modern
Hebrew,
New Hebrew,
Israeli Standard Hebrew,
Standard Hebrew, and so on. Israeli Hebrew exhibits many
features of
Sephardic
Hebrew from its local Jerusalemite tradition but adapts it with
numerous neologisms, borrowed terms (often technical) from European
languages and adopted terms (often colloquial) from
Arabic.
The literary and narrative use of Hebrew was revived beginning with
the
Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement.
The first
secular periodical in Hebrew, Hameassef (The Gatherer),
was published by Maskilim literati in Königsberg
from 1783 onwards. In the mid-19th century,
publications of several Eastern European Hebrew-language newspapers
(e.g.
HaMagid, founded in Lyck, Prussia
, in 1856) multiplied. Prominent poets were
Chaim Nachman Bialik and
Shaul Tchernichovsky; there
were also novels written in the language.
The
revival of the Hebrew
language as a
mother tongue was
initiated by the efforts of
Eliezer
Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922) ( ). He joined the
Jewish national movement and in 1881 immigrated to
Palestine, then a part 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.
However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been replaced
in
Eastern Europe by different
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 1904-1914
Second Aliyah that Hebrew had caught
real momentum in Ottoman Palestine with the more highly 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. A constructed modern language with a
truly Semitic vocabulary and written appearance, although often
European in phonology, was to take its place among the current
languages of the nations.
Reactions
While many saw his work as fanciful or even
blasphemous (because Hebrew was the holy language
of the Torah and therefore some thought that it should not be used
to discuss everyday matters), many soon understood the need for a
common language amongst Jews of the Palestine Mandate 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 still exists today. The results
of his and the Committee's work were published in a dictionary
(
The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew).
The seeds of 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 Palestine. At the time, members of the
Old Yishuv and a very few
Hasidic sects, most notably those under the
auspices of
Satmar, refused to speak Hebrew
and only spoke Yiddish. However, while this ideological stance
persists in certain quarters, almost all members of these groups
have learned modern Hebrew in order to interact with
outsiders.
Russia and the Soviet Union
Russian has separate terms for Ancient Hebrew (
Древнееврейский
язык, "ancient Jewish language") and Modern Hebrew (
Иврит (Ivrit), directly
borrowed from the Hebrew name).
The Soviet authorities considered the use of Hebrew "reactionary"
since it was associated with both
Judaism
and
Zionism, and the teaching of Hebrew at
primary and secondary schools was officially banned by the
Narkompros (Commissariat of Education) as early
as 1919, as part of an overall agenda aiming to
secularize education (the language itself
didn't cease to be studied at universities for historical and
linguistic purposes). The official ordinance stated that
Yiddish, being the spoken language of the Russian
Jews, should be treated as their only national language, while
Hebrew was to be treated as a foreign language. Hebrew books and
periodicals ceased to be published and were seized from the
libraries, although liturgical texts were still published until the
1930s. Despite numerous protests in the West, a policy of
suppression of the teaching of Hebrew operated from the 1930s on.
Later in the 1980s in the USSR, Hebrew studies reappeared due to
people struggling for permission to go to Israel (
refuseniks). Several of the teachers were
imprisoned, for example,
Ephraim
Kholmyansky,
Yevgeny
Korostyshevsky and others responsible for a Hebrew learning
network connecting many cities of USSR.
Birobidzhan
Birobidzhan Jewish
National University works in cooperation with the local
Jewish community of Birobidzhan
. The
university is
unique in the
Russian Far East. The
basis of the training course is study of the Hebrew language,
history and classic Jewish texts.
In recent years, the Jewish
Autonomous Oblast
has grown interested in its Jewish roots.
Students study Hebrew and Yiddish at a Jewish school and
Birobidzhan Jewish National University.
In 1989, the Jewish
center founded its Sunday school,
where children study Yiddish, learn folk
Jewish dance, and learn about the
history of Israel. The
Israeli government helps fund the
program.
Chief Rabbi Mordechai Scheiner has commended the
progress at School No. 2, Birobidjan's Jewish
public school with 670
students, 30 percent of whom are Jewish. Pupils learn about
Jewish history, and the Hebrew and
Yiddish languages.
Modern Israeli Hebrew
Standard Hebrew, as developed by
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, was based on
Mishnaic spelling and
Sephardi Hebrew pronunciation.
However, the earliest speakers of Modern Hebrew had
Yiddish as their native tongue and often brought
into Hebrew idioms and literal translations from Yiddish.
Similarly, the language as spoken in
Israel has adapted to Ashkenazi Hebrew phonology in the following respects:
- the elimination of pharyngeal
articulation in the letters chet and
ayin
- the conversion of from an alveolar
flap ( ) to a voiced uvular
fricative ( ) or trill ( ) (see
Guttural R)
- the pronunciation (by many speakers) of tzere as in some contexts (sifrey and
teysha instead of Sephardic sifré and
tésha' )
- the gradual elimination of vocal schwa (zman instead of Sephardic
zĕman)
- in popular speech, penultimate stress in proper names
(Dvóra instead of Dĕvorá; Yehúda instead
of Yĕhudá)
- similarly in popular speech, penultimate stress in nouns or
verbs with a second or third person plural suffix
(katávtem "you wrote" instead of kĕtavtém).
Loan Words
Modern Israeli Hebrew has borrowed many words from
Aramaic,
Yiddish,
German,
Russian,
Arabic,
English and other languages.
Classification
The vast majority of scholars see Modern Hebrew as a direct
continuation of Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew, though they concede
that it has acquired some European vocabulary and syntactical
features, in much the same way as
Modern Standard Arabic (or even more
so, dialects such as
Moroccan
Arabic). There are two minor dissenting views, which have not
been accepted by most scholars, and are in fact subject to much
criticism. They are:
- Paul Wexler claims that modern Hebrew is not a Semitic language
at all, but a dialect of "Judaeo-Sorbian". He argues that the
underlying structure of the language is Slavic, but "re-lexified" to absorb much of
the vocabulary and inflexional system of Hebrew in much the same
way as a creole. This view forms
part of a larger complex of theories, such as that Ashkenazi Jews are predominantly descended
from Slavic and Turkic tribes rather than from the ancient
Israelites, none of which are accepted by mainstream
scholarship.
- Ghil'ad Zuckermann
compromises between Wexler and the majority view: according to him,
"Israeli" (his term for Israeli Hebrew) is a Semito-European
hybrid language, which is the
continuation not only of literary Hebrew but also of Yiddish, as well as Polish, Russian, German, English, Ladino, Arabic and other languages spoken by
Hebrew revival. Thus,
"Yiddish is a primary contributor to Israeli Hebrew because it was
the mother tongue of the vast majority of revivalists and first
pioneers in Eretz Yisrael at the crucial period of the beginning of
Israeli Hebrew". According to Zuckermann, although the revivalists
wished to speak Hebrew, with Semitic grammar and pronunciation,
they could not avoid the Ashkenazi
mindset arising from their European
background. He argues that their attempt to deny their European roots, negate diasporism and avoid hybridity (as reflected in
Yiddish) failed. "Had the revivalists been Arabic-speaking or
Berber-speaking Jews (e.g. from Morocco), Israeli Hebrew would have
been a totally different language – both genetically and
typologically, much more Semitic. The impact of the founder
population on Israeli Hebrew is incomparable with that of later
immigrants."
So far, neither view has gained significant acceptance among
mainstream linguists, and both have been criticized by some as
being based less on linguistic evidence than post- or anti-Zionist
political motivations. However, some linguists, for example
American Yiddish scholar
Dovid Katz, have
employed Zuckermann's
glottonym "Israeli"
and accept his notion of hybridity. Few would dispute that Hebrew
has acquired some European features as a result of having been
learned by immigrants as a second language at a crucial formative
stage. The identity of the European substrate/adstrate has varied:
in the time of the Mandate and the early State, the principal
contributor was Yiddish, while today it is
American English. There has also been some
influence, on vocabulary rather than structure, from Arabic, both
in the form of
Palestinian Arabic
and, during the large scale immigrations of
Mizrahi Jews during the 1950-60s, the
Yemenite and
North
African dialects.
Some Russian influence may also be observed,
both during the founding period and as a result of the wave of
immigration from the former Soviet Union
following
its collapse in 1991.
Regional dialects
According to
Ethnologue, the currently
spoken dialects of Hebrew are "Standard Hebrew (Modern Israeli
Hebrew)", and "Mizrahi (Oriental) Hebrew". (The latter is a way of
pronouncing Israeli Hebrew, and should not be confused with the
liturgical dialects
Sephardi Hebrew,
Mizrahi Hebrew and
Yemenite Hebrew.) These refer to two
varieties used for actual communication by native speakers in
Israel; they differ mainly in pronunciation, and hardly in any
other way.
Immigrants to Israel are encouraged to adopt "Standard Hebrew" as
their daily language. Phonologically, Modern Hebrew may most
accurately be described as an amalgam of pronunciations preserving
Sephardic vowel sounds and some Ashkenazic consonant sounds with
Yiddish-style influence, its recurring feature being simplification
of differences among a wide array of pronunciations. This
simplifying tendency also accounts for the collapse of the
Ashkenazic and allophones of ( ) into the single
phone . Most Sephardic and Mizrahi
dialects share this feature, though some (such as those of Iraq and
Yemen) differentiate between these two pronunciations as and .
Within Israel, however, the pronunciation of Hebrew more often
reflects the diasporic origin of the individual speaker, rather
than the specific recommendations of the
Academy. For this reason,
over half the population pronounces as (a
uvular trill, as in Yiddish and
French) or as (a
voiced uvular fricative, as in
Standard German), rather than as , an
alveolar trill, as in
Spanish and
Italian. The pronunciation of this phoneme
is often used among Israelis as a
shibboleth or determinant when ascertaining the
national origin of perceived foreigners.
There are mixed views on the status of the two dialects. On the one
hand, prominent Israelis of Sephardic or Oriental origin are
admired for the purity of their speech and Yemenite Jews are often
employed as newsreaders. On the other hand, the speech of
middle-class Ashkenazim is regarded as having a certain
Central European sophistication, and many
speakers of
Mizrahi origin have moved
nearer to this version of Standard Hebrew, in some cases even
adopting the uvular
resh.
It was formerly the case that the inhabitants of the north of
Israel pronounced
beth rafe ( , bet
without
dagesh, literally
loose
beth: ) as instead of , in accordance with the conservative
Sephardic pronunciation . This was regarded as rustic and has since
disappeared. It is said that one can tell an inhabitant of
Jerusalem by the pronunciation of the word for two hundred as
"ma'atayim" (מאתיים, as distinct from "matayim", as heard elsewhere
in the country). Today, Israeli Hebrew is virtually uniform, the
only noticeable variation being along ethnic lines. It is widely
felt that these differences, too, have been disappearing among the
younger generation.
Aramaic
Aramaic is a North-West
Semitic language, like Canaanite. Its name
derives either from " " in Upper Mesopotamia or from "Aram", an
ancient name for Syria. Various dialects of Aramaic coevolved with
Hebrew throughout much of its history, as major languages in the
region. The words in Greek and Hebrew at the time corresponding to
the word "Hebrew" (Εβραις, Εβραιστι, עברית יהודית) are
distinguished from Aramaic συριστι συριακη.
The
Persian Empire that captured
Babylonia a few decades later adopted Imperial Aramaic as the
official international language of the Persian Empire.
The Israelite
population, who had been exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem and its
surrounding region of Judah, were allowed to return to
Jerusalem to establish a Persian province, usually called
Judea
.
Thus Aramaic became the administrative language for Judea when
dealing with the rest of the Persian Empire.
The Aramaic script also evolved from the Paleo-Semitic script, but
they diverged significantly. By the 1st century
CE, the Aramaic script developed into the
distinctive
Hebrew square
script (also known as
Assyrian Script,
Ktav Ashuri), extant in the Dead Sea Scrolls and
similar to the script still in use today.
One of several languages known to
Jesus was a
dialect of Aramaic. Those in the North of Israel, in Galilee,
interacted with Aramaic-speaking societies to the North and East,
including for trade. Under Roman occupation, they also spoke some
Greek or, more rarely, Latin. In the South around Jerusalem, and in
Tiberias, the Jews spoke Hebrew.
Displacement
By the early half of the 20th century, most scholars followed
Geiger and Dalman in thinking that Aramaic became a spoken language
in the land of Israel by the start of Israel's
Hellenistic Period in the 4th century
BCE, and that as a corollary Hebrew ceased to
function as a spoken language around the same time. Segal,
Klausner, and Ben Yehuda are notable exceptions to this view.
During the latter half of the 20th century, accumulating
archaeological evidence and especially linguistic analysis of the
Dead Sea Scrolls has disproven that
view.
The
Dead Sea Scrolls, uncovered in
1946-1948 near Qumran
revealed
ancient Jewish texts overwhelmingly in Hebrew, not
Aramaic.The Qumran scrolls
indicate that Hebrew texts were readily understandable to the
average Israelite, and that the language had evolved since Biblical
times as spoken languages do. Recent scholarship recognizes
that reports of Jews speaking in Aramaic indicates a multi-lingual
society, not necessarily the primary language spoken. Alongside
Aramaic, Hebrew co-existed within Israel as a spoken
language.
Some further evidence for this contention has been found in the
Christian Bible, in which rare occasions of a person speaking in
Aramaic are given special attention as being unusual. Rather than
dialogue being primarily in Aramaic with the exceptional Hebrew,
the New Testament presupposes dialogue in Hebrew and points out
Aramaic discussions as being exceptions to normal speech.
Similarly, Paul is portrayed as speaking to a crowd of Jews
têi
hebraïdi dialéktôi lit.'in the Hebrew dialect'. A commonly
proposed translation for this Greek passage is 'in the Aramaic
vernacular of Palestine'. Such a translation ignores, of course,
the fact that Aramaic has a standard word in Greek συριστι/συριακη
(cf. LXX Job 42:17ff, and Dan 2:4.), it is really only based on
place names that are called Hebrew and that had an Aramaizing
etymology. In a groundbreaking article Grintz suggested that
Hebrew, rather than Aramaic, lay behind the composition of the
Gospel of Matthew.
Grintz dates the
demise of Hebrew as a spoken language to the end of the Roman
Period. Hebrew nonetheless continued on as a
literary language down through
Byzantine Period from
the 4th century
CE.
The exact roles of Aramaic and Hebrew remain hotly debated. A
trilingual scenario has been proposed for the land of Israel.
Hebrew functioned as the local
mother
tongue with powerful ties to Israel's history, origins, and
golden age and as the language of Israel's religion; Aramaic
functioned as the international language with the rest of the
Mideast; and eventually Greek functioned as another international
language with the eastern areas of the Roman Empire. Communities of
Jews (and non-Jews) are known, who immigrated to Judea from these
other lands and continued to speak Aramaic or Greek.
Many Hebrew linguists postulate the survival of Hebrew as a spoken
language until the Byzantine Period, but some historians do not
accept this.
The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls
distinguishes the Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew from the various dialects
of Biblical Hebrew out of which it evolved: "This book presents the
specific features of DSS Hebrew, emphasizing deviations from
classical BH."
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian
Church which once said, in 1958 in its first edition, that
Hebrew "ceased to be a spoken language around the fourth century
BCE", now says, in its 1997 (third) edition, that Hebrew "continued
to be used as a spoken and written language in the New Testament
period".
An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew says,
"It is generally believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically
the Copper Scroll and also the Bar Kokhba letters, have furnished
clear evidence of the popular character of MH [Mishnaic Hebrew]."
And so on. It is widespread among Israeli scholars to treat Hebrew
as a spoken language as a feature of Judea's Roman Period.
Dialects
The international language of Aramaic radiated into various
regional dialects. In and around Judea, various dialects of
Old Western Aramaic
emerged, including the Jewish dialect of
Old Judean Aramaic during the Roman
Period.
Josephus Flavius initially
drafted his account of
The Jewish
War in Old Judean Aramaic but later recast it into
Koine Greek to publish it for the Roman imperial
court. Unfortunately Josephus's Aramaic version has not
survived.
Following the
destruction of
Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70
CE, the Jews gradually began to disperse from
Jerusalem to foreign countries, especially after the
Bar Kokhba War in 135
CE when the Romans turned Jerusalem into a pagan
city named
Aelia Capitolina.
After the Bar Kokhba War in the 2nd century
CE, the
Jewish Palestinian Aramaic
dialect emerged from obscurity out of the vicinity of Galilee to
form one of the main dialects in the
Western branch of Middle
Aramaic. The
Jerusalem Talmud
(by the 5th century) used this Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, as did
the
Midrash Rabba (6th to 12th century).
This dialect probably influenced the pronunciation of the
8th-century
Tiberian Hebrew that
vocalizes the Hebrew Bible.
Meanwhile over in Babylon, the
Babylonian Talmud (by the 7th century)
used
Jewish Babylonian
Aramaic, a Jewish dialect in the
Eastern branch of Middle
Aramaic. For centuries Jewish Babylonian remained the spoken
language of Mesopotamian Jews and the
Lishana Deni.
In the area of Kurdistan
, there is a modern Aramaic dialect descending from
it that is still spoken by a few thousand Jews (and non-Jews),
though it has largely given way to Arabic.
Hebrew continues to strongly influence all these various
Jewish dialects of Aramaic.
Other coexisting languages
Besides Jewish dialects of
Aramaic,
other languages are highly influenced by Hebrew, such as
Yiddish,
Ladino,
Karaite and
Judeo-Arabic. Although none is
completely derived from Hebrew, they all make extensive use of
Hebrew
loanwords.
The revival of Hebrew is often cited by proponents of
international auxiliary
languages as the best proof that languages long dead, with
small communities, or modified or created artificially can become
living languages used by a large number of people.
Phonology
Vowels
The vowel phonemes of Modern Israeli
Hebrew
The Hebrew word for
vowels is (תְּנוּעוֹת).
The
orthographic representations for
these vowels are called
Niqqud. Israeli
Hebrew has 5 vowel
phonemes, represented by
the following Niqqud-signs:
| phoneme |
in
Modern Hebrew |
approximate pronunciation
in English |
othographic
representation |
| "long" * |
"short" * |
"very short" / "interrupted"
* |
|
|
(as in "spa") |
( ָ ) |
( ַ ) |
( ֲ ) |
|
|
(as in "bet") |
( ֵי )
or ( ֵ ) |
( ֶ ) |
( ֱ ), sometimes ( ְ ) |
|
|
(as in "ski") |
( ִי
) |
( ִ ) |
|
|
|
(as in "gore") |
( וֹ ) or ( ֹ ) |
( ָ ) |
( ֳ ) |
|
|
(as in "flu" but with no diphthongization) |
( ) |
( ֻ ) |
|
| * The severalfold orthographic
representation of each phoneme attests to the broader phonemic
range of vowels in earlier forms of Hebrew. Some
linguists still regard the Hebrew grammatical entity of Shva na—marked as Shva
(ְ)—as representing a sixth phoneme, . |
In
Biblical Hebrew, each vowel had
three forms: short, long and interrupted ( ). However, there is no
audible distinction between the three in modern Israeli Hebrew,
except that is often pronounced as in
Ashkenazi Hebrew.
Shva
The
Niqqud sign "
Shva"
represents four grammatical entities: resting (
nakh /
נָח), moving (
na' / נָע), floating (
merahef /
מְרַחֵף) and "bleating" or "bellowing" ('ga'ya' / גַּעְיָּה). In
earlier forms of Hebrew, these entities were phonologically and
phonetically distinguishable. However, in
Modern Hebrew these distinctions are not
observed. For example,the (first)
Shva
Nach in the word קִמַּטְתְ (fem.
you crumpled) is
pronounced ( ) even though it should be mute, whereas the
Shva Na in זְמַן (
time), which
theoretically should be pronounced, is usually mute ( ). Sometimes
the shva is pronounced like a tsere when accented, as in the prefix
"ve" meaning "and".
One-letter prefixes
Hebrew uses a number of
one-letter prefixes that are
added to words for various purposes. These are called "Letters of
Use" (
Hebrew: אותיות השימוש, Otiyot
HaShimush). Such items include: the definite
article ha- ( ) (="the");
prepositions be- ( ) (="in"),
le- ( ) (="to"),
mi- ( ) (="from"; a shortened
version of the preposition
min'); conjunctions ve-
( )
(="and"), she-
( ) (="that"), ke-
( ) (="as",
"like").
The vowel accompanying each of these letters may differ from those
listed above, depending on the first letter or vowel following it.
The rules governing these changes are hardly observed in colloquial
speech, as most speakers tend to employ the regular form. The
correct form may be heard in more formal circumstances. For
example, if a preposition is put before a word which begins with a
moving
Shva, then the preposition takes the
vowel (and the initial consonant may be weakened): colloquial
be-kfar (="in a village") corresponds to the more formal
bi-khfar.
The definite article may be inserted between a preposition or a
conjunction and the word it refers to, creating composite words
like
mé-ha-kfar (="from the village"). The latter also
demonstrates the change in the vowel of
mi-. With
be and
le, the definite article is assimilated
into the prefix, which then becomes
ba or
la.
Thus *
be-ha-matos becomes
ba-matos (="in the
plane"). Note that this does not happen to
mé (the form of
"min" or "mi-" used before the letter "he"), therefore
mé-ha-matos is a valid form, which means "from the
airplane".
- * indicates that the given example is grammatically
non standard
Consonants
The Hebrew word for consonants is ( ). The following table lists
the Hebrew consonants and their pronunciation in
IPA transcription:
consonants in left,
and The voiced
consonants in right. geal Dental alveolar m n b t d g v
z ʁ h j l
|
Consonants |
Note: The
voiceless
|
Labial |
Coronal |
Dorsal |
Laryn-
|
| Bilabial |
Labio-
|
Dental |
Alveolar |
Post-
|
Palatal |
Velar |
Uvular |
Glottal |
| Nasal |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Plosive |
p |
|
|
|
|
|
k |
|
ʔ |
|
| Affricate |
|
|
|
ʦ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Fricative |
|
f |
|
s |
ʃ |
|
|
χ |
|
|
| Approximant |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Lateral
Approximant |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The pairs , and have historically been allophonic. In Modern
Hebrew, however, all six sounds are phonemic, due to mergers
involving formerly distinct sounds ( merging with , merging with ,
merging with ), loss of consonant gemination (which formerly
distinguished the stop members of the pairs from the fricatives
when intervocalic), and the introduction of syllable-initial
through foreign borrowings.
was once pronounced as a
voiced pharyngeal fricative.
Most modern
Ashkenazi Jews do not
differentiate between and ; however,
Mizrahi Jews and Arabs pronounce these phonemes.
Georgian
Jews pronounce it as a glottalized q.
Western European
Sephardim and Dutch
Ashkenazim traditionally pronounce it
(like
ng in
sing) a pronunciation which can also
be found in the
Italian tradition and,
historically, in south-west Germany. (The remnants of this
pronunciation are found throughout the Ashkenazi world, in the name
"Yankl" and "Yanki", diminutive forms of
Jacob, Heb. .)
Hebrew also has
dagesh, a
phonological process of consonant strengthening that is indicated
in fully-pointed texts by a dot placed in the center of a
consonant. There are two kinds of strengthenings: light
(
kal, known also as
dagesh lene) and heavy
(
hazak or
dagesh forte). The light version
applies to the phonemes (historically, also , and ), causing them
to be pronounced as stops rather than fricatives, and operates when
the dagesh occurs in the beginning of a word or after a consonant
(i.e. a silent
shva). The heavy dagesh occurs
after vowels and applies to all consonants except
gutturals and , originally causing them to be
pronounced as
geminate (doubled)
consonants; it also selects the stop allophone of , , , etc. (In
Modern Hebrew, gemination has disappeared, and the hence the heavy
dagesh has a phonological effect only on , affecting them the same
as the light dagesh.) Traditional Hebrew grammar distinguishes two
sub-categories of the heavy dagesh according to their historical
origin: structural heavy (
hazak tavniti) and complementing
heavy (
hazak mashlim). . Structural heavy dagesh
corresponds to consonant doubling that was inherited from
Proto-Semitic, and occurs in certain verb
conjugations and noun patterns (
mishkalim and
binyanim; see the section on grammar below). Complementing
heavy dagesh corresponds to consonant doubling that arose within
Hebrew as a result of consonant
assimilation, most commonly of an
to a following consonant (e.g. Biblical Hebrew "you (m. sg.)" vs.
Classical Arabic ).
Historical sound changes
Standard (non-Oriental) Israeli Hebrew (SIH) has undergone a number
of splits and mergers in its development from
Biblical Hebrew.
- BH had two allophones, and ; the
allophone has merged with into SIH
- BH had two allophones, and ; the allophone has merged with into
SIH , while the allophone has merged with into SIH
- BH and have merged into SIH
- BH and have usually merged into SIH , but this distinction may
also be upheld in educated speech of many Sephardim and some Ashkenazim
- BH had two allophones, and ; the incorporation of loanwords
into Modern Hebrew has probably resulted in a split, so that and
are separate phonemes.
Stress
Hebrew has two frequent kinds of
lexical
stress, on the last syllable ( ; מלרע) and on the penultimate
syllable (the one preceding the last, ; מלעיל), of which the first
is more frequent. Unofficially, some words exhibit a stress on the
antepenultimate syllable or even further back; this occurs often in
loanwords, e.g. פּוֹלִיטִיקָה ,
"politics", and sometimes in native Hebrew words, e.g. אֵיכְשֶׁהוּ
, "somehow"; אֵיפֹשֶׁהוּ , "somewhere".
Specific rules correlate the location or absence of stress in a
syllable with the written representation of
vowel length and whether or not the syllable
ends with a
vowel or a
consonant. Since spoken Israeli Hebrew does not
distinguish between long and short vowels, these rules are not
evident in speech. They usually cannot be inferred from written
text either, since usually vowel diacritics are omitted. The result
is that nowadays stress has phonemic value, as the following table
illustrates: acoustically, the following word pairs differ only in
the location of the stress; orthographically they differ also in
the written representation of the length of the vowels, however if
vowel diacritics are omitted (as is usually the case in Modern
Israeli Hebrew) they are written identically:
common spelling
(Ktiv Hasar Niqqud) |
-stressed |
-stressed |
| spelling with vowel
diacritics |
pronunciation |
translation |
spelling with vowel
diacritics |
pronunciation |
translation |
| ילד |
יֶלֶד |
|
boy |
יֵלֵד |
|
will give birth |
| אוכל |
אֹכֶל |
|
food |
אוֹכֵל |
|
eats (masculine singular) |
| בוקר |
בֹּקֶר |
|
morning |
בּוֹקֵר |
|
cowboy |
Little ambiguity exists, however, due to context and syntactic
features; compare e.g. the English word "conduct" in its nominal
and verbal forms.
Grammar
Hebrew grammar is partly
analytic, expressing such forms as
dative,
ablative, and
accusative using
prepositional particles rather than
grammatical cases. However, inflection
plays a decisive role in the formation of the verbs and nouns. E.g.
nouns have a construct state, called "smikhut", to denote the
relationship of "belonging to": this is the converse of the
genitive case of more inflected
languages. Words in smikhut are often combined with
hyphens. In modern speech, the use of the construct
is sometimes interchangeable with the preposition "shel", meaning
"of". There are many cases, however, where older declined forms are
retained (especially in idiomatic expressions and the like), and
"person"-
enclitics are widely used to
"decline" prepositions.
Writing system
Modern Hebrew is written from right to left using the
Hebrew alphabet. Modern scripts are based on
the "square" letter form, known as
Ashurit (Assyrian),
which was developed from the Aramaic script. A
cursive Hebrew script is used in handwriting,
but the letters tend to be more circular in form when written in
cursive, and sometimes vary markedly from their printed
equivalents. The medieval version of the cursive script forms the
basis of another font, known as
Rashi
script, equivalent to
italics,
which is used for commentaries and marginal notes in religious
texts.
Vowel signs
Original Biblical Hebrew text contained nothing but consonants and
spaces and this is still the case with
Torah
scrolls that are used in synagogues. A system of writing vowels
called
niqqud (lit. "dotting") (from the root
word meaning "points" or "dots") developed around the 5th Century
CE. It is used today in printed Bibles and some other religious
books and also in poetry, children's literature, and texts for
beginning students of Hebrew. Most modern Hebrew texts contain only
consonant letters, spaces and western-style
punctuation, and to facilitate reading without
vowels,
matres lectionis (see below)
are often inserted into words which would be written without them
in a text with full niqqud. The niqqud system is sometimes used
when it is necessary 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.
Consonant letters
All Hebrew consonant phonemes are represented by a single letter
(with some exceptions in
Modern
Hebrew). Although a single letter might represent two phonemes
the letter "bet," for example, represents both and the two sounds
are always related "hard" (
plosive) and
"soft" (
fricative) forms, their
pronunciation being very often determined by context. In fully
pointed texts, the hard form normally has a dot, known as a
dagesh, in its center.
There are twenty-seven symbols, representing twenty-two letters, in
the Hebrew alphabet, which is called the "aleph bet" because of its
first two letters. The letters are as follows: Aleph, Bet/Vet,
Gimel, Dalet, He, Vav, Zayin, Chet, Tet, Yod (pronounced Yud by
Israelis), Kaf/Chaf, Lamed, Mem, Nun, Samekh, Ayin, Pe/Fe, Tzadi,
Qof (pronounced Koof by Israelis), Resh, Shin/Sin, Tav.
- The letters Bet, Kaf and Pay (historically, also the letters
Gimel, Dalet and Tav) are softened to fricatives when following a vowel (except when
doubled). In a fully pointed text, this distinction is indicated by
the use of dagesh to denote the hard sound. (Occasionally,
a horizontal line called rafe, written above the letter, is
used to indicate the softened sound.) This has led to the
misconception that there are separate letters "Vet", "Chaf" and
"Fay".
- The letter Shin/Sin is usually pronounced Sh, but occasionally
S. In fully pointed texts, this distinction is indicated by a dot
at the top left hand corner (for Sin) or the top right hand corner
(for Shin). This may indicate that the pronunciation prevailing
when the consonantal spelling of Hebrew was fixed was different
from that prevailing when the system of pointing was devised, so
that the Sin dot is a permanent reminder saying "this letter is
spelled Shin but pronounced Samech". (In Samaritan Hebrew Shin is pronounced Sh
wherever it occurs, and there is no "Sin".) Others regard Sin as a
genuine phoneme separate from both Shin and Samech and believe that
it must once have had a distinct pronunciation.
- There are two written forms of the letters Kaf/Chaf, Mem, Nun,
Pe and Tzadi. Each of these is written differently when appearing
at the end of a word than when appearing at the beginning or in the
middle of the word. The version used at the end of a word is
referred to as Final Kaf, Final Mem, etc. Except in the case of
Mem, the difference is that the final form has a tail pointing
straight down, whereas in the normal form it bends to the left to
point to the next letter.
Mater lectionis
The letters he, vav and yod can represent consonantal sounds ( ,
and , respectively) or serve as a markers for vowels. In the latter
case, these letters are called " " (" " in Latin, "mothers of
reading" in English).
The letter he at the end of a word usually indicates a final ,
which usually indicates feminine gender, or , which usually
indicates masculine gender. In rare cases it may also indicate ,
such as in (
Shlomo,
Solomon). It
may also indicate a possessive suffix for 3rd person feminine
singular ( ,
her book), but in that case the he is not a
mater lectionis but the consonant , although in spoken Hebrew the
distinction is rarely made. In texts with niqqud the he is written
with a
mappiq in the latter case. Correct
pronunciation must be guessed according to context and niqqud may
be used for disambiguation.
Vav may represent or , and yod may represent or . Sometimes a
double yud is used for or (this convention is derived from
Yiddish). In some modern Israeli texts, the letter alef is used to
indicate long sounds in foreign names, particularly those of Arabic
origin.
In some words there is a choice of whether to use a mater lectionis
or not, and in modern printed texts matres lectionis are sometimes
used even for short vowels (see
Ktiv
male), which is considered to be grammatically incorrect though
instances are found as far back as Talmudic times. Spelling with
matres lectionis is called
male (full), while spelling
without matres lectionis is called
haser (deficient,
sparse). In Talmudic times texts from Palestine were noticeably
more inclined to
male spellings than texts from Babylonia:
this may reflect the influence of Greek, which had full alphabetic
spelling. Similarly in the Middle Ages Ashkenazim tended to use
male spellings under the influence of European languages,
while Sephardim tended to use
haser spellings under the
influence of Arabic.
Indicating stress
There is no one universally accepted sign for indicating stress in
Hebrew texts. Usually
stress is
unmarked. In some vocalized texts, such as prayer books, when the
stress is not on the last syllable it is marked with a small stroke
placed underneath the first consonant of the stressed syllable to
the left of the vowel mark (occasionally, as in
Davidson's grammar, a different sign is
used, to avoid confusion with
meteg, see next paragraph).
In vocalized Biblical texts stress is shown by the appropriate
cantillation mark.
A secondary stress in a word may be marked with a vertical stroke,
called a
meteg (מתג), placed to the left of the vowel:
this symbol is available in Unicode.
Meteg is most usually
found two syllables before the main stress: thus, when the
following consonant carries a
shva, it
follows that that
shva is a sounded one. (For example, the
word
ochlah, her food, is written in the same way as
āchěla, she ate, but
meteg on the first syllable
shows that
āchěla is intended.)
These signs are used, if at all, only in texts with niqqud.
See also
Notes
- Ross, Allen P. Introducing Biblical Hebrew, Baker Academic,
2001.
- Nicholas Ostler, Empires of the Word: A Language History of
the World, Harper Perennial, London, New York, Toronto, Sydney
2006 p80
- Languages of the World (Hebrew)
- M. Segal, A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1927).
- Elisha Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
Harvard Semitic Studies 29 (Atlanta: Scholars Press 1986).
- Rashi, Genesis 2, 23
- Rashi, Genesis 11, 1
- Shalom Spiegel,Hebrew Reborn,(1930) Meridian Books
reprint 1962, New York p.56
- Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Resurgence of the Hebrew
Language by Libby Kantorwitz
- The Transformation of Jewish Culture in the USSR from 1930
to the Present (in Russian)
- Nosonovski, Michael (in Russian)
- Protest against the suppression of Hebrew in the
Soviet Union 1930-1931 signed by Albert Einstein, among others.
- These pronunciations may have originated in learners' mistakes
formed on the analogy of other suffixed forms (katávta,
alénu), rather than being examples of residual Ashkenazi
influence.
- Blau, Joshua, Tehiyyát ha'ivrít ut'hiyyát ha'aravít
hasifrutít: kavím makbilím umafridím (The Renaissance of Hebrew in
the Light of the Renaissance of Standard Arabic) (=Texts and
Studies, vol. ix), Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language,
1976; Blau, Joshua, The Renaissance of Modern Hebrew and Modern
Standard Arabic: Parallels and Differences in the Revival of Two
Semitic Languages (=Near Eastern Studies, vol. xviii),
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1981.
- Wexler, Paul, The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew: A
Slavic Language in Search of a Semitic Past: 1990.
- Zuckermann, Mosaic or mosaic? – The Genesis of
the Israeli Language
- Zuckermann, Abba, Why Was Professor Higgins Trying to
Teach Eliza to Speak Like Our Cleaning Lady?: Mizrahim, Ashkenazim,
Prescriptivism and the Real Sounds of the Israeli
Language
- Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), "Complement Clause Types in
Israeli", Complementation: A Cross-Linguistic Typology,
edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, pp. 72-92.
- See p. 62 in Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), "A New Vision for
'Israeli Hebrew': Theoretical and Practical Implications of
Analysing Israel's Main Language as a Semi-Engineered
Semito-European Hybrid Language", Journal of Modern Jewish
Studies 5 (1), pp. 57-71.
- Ibid., p. 63.
- ibid.
- [1]
- A Pocket Lexicon to the Greek New Testament by
Alexander
Souter (1916), Wycliffe Bible
Dictionary (1975), New Dictionary by
Avraham Even-Shoshan (1988, in Hebrew).
Notice that in the Gospel of John some place names are said to
be "in Hebrew", when they are etymologically from Aramaic. John
correctly calls the word rabbounei Hebrew.
- Acts 21:40; 22:2; 26:14
- Geoffrey W.Bromley (ed.)The International Standard Bible
Encyclopedia, W.B.Eeerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan 1979, 4
vols. vol.1 (sub.'Aramaic' p.233
- J.M.Griatz, ‘Hebrew in the Days of the Second Temple’ QBI, 79
(1960) pp.32-47
- Elisha Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls
(1986), p. 15.
- "Hebrew" in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian
Church, edit. F.L. Cross, first edition (Oxford, 1958), 3rd
edition (Oxford 1997).
- Miguel Perez Fernandez, An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic
Hebrew (Leiden, Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill 1997).
- Robert
Hetzron. (1987). Hebrew. In The World's Major
Languages, ed. Bernard Comrie, 686–704. Oxford:
Oxford University Press. ISBN
0-19-520521-9.
- Theses rules are sometimes slightly different for verbs and
nouns; thus the stress in the noun דָּבָר ( , "thing") and the verb
גָּבַר ( "to overpower") are both on the last syllable, even though
this syllable is pointed
with the sign for a long vowel for the noun and for a short vowel
for the verb. Modern classification of vowel diacritics according to the vowel length they
allegedly denote, however, might not concur with the historically
correct phonological distinction between vowel lengths, see
Tiberian vocalization → Full
vowels.
References
- Biella, Joan Copeland 1982 Dictionary of Old South Arabic -
Sabean Dialect Eisenbrauns Winona Lake Indiana ISBN
1-57506-919-9
- Hoffman, Joel M, In the Beginning: A Short History of the
Hebrew Language. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 0-8147-3654-8.
- Izre'el, Shlomo, "The emergence of Spoken Israeli Hebrew", in:
Benjamin Hary (ed.), The Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew (CoSIH): Working
Papers I (2001)
- Kuzar, Ron, Hebrew and Zionism: A Discourse Analytic
Cultural Study. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter 2001.
ISBN 3-11-016993-2, ISBN 3-11-016992-4.
- Laufer, Asher. "Hebrew", in: Handbook of the International
Phonetic Association. Cambridge University Press 1999.
ISBN 0-521-65236-7, ISBN 0-521-63751-1.
- Leeman, Bernard Queen of Sheba and Biblical
Scholarship, Queensland Academic Press, Westbrook Australia,
2005 ISBN 0-9758022-0-8
- Leeman, Bernard "The ca. 800 B.C.E. Sabaean Inscriptions
mentioning Hebrew at Adi Kaweh, Ethiopia - evidence supporting the
narrative of the Sheba-Menelik Cycle of the Kebra Nagast"
African Studies Association of Australasia and Pacific
Conference, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane,
Australia, Friday 2 October 2009
- Sáenz-Badillos, Angel, 1993 A History of the Hebrew
Language (trans. John Elwolde). Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 0-521-55634-1
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