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Hebrew HebrewT ext 'Ivrit
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Introduction

Israel Temple

Hebrew, or 'Ivrit, is a member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. It is the language of the Hebrew Bible, and the Old Testament of the Christians. Its history is unique. It is thought that Hebrew gradually became extinct as a spoken language around Isreal Map200 AD, but has continued as a written language for many centuries thereafter. It was used to write books and documents in a variety of fields, including religion, law, business, philosophy, literature, and medicine. The core of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, traditionally believed to have been first recorded in the time of Moses 3,300 years ago, is written in Classical Hebrew.

Hebrew was revived as a spoken language during the late 19th and early 20th century as Modern Hebrew, replacing Arabic, Yiddish, Russian, and a variety of other languages spoken by Jews who emigrated to Israel.

Hebrew is spoken by about 5 million people in Israel. In addition, it is spoken by several hundred thousand speakers in the Palestinian territories and expatriot Jewish communities around the world (Ethnologue).

Hebrew began to die out as a spoken language after the Jews were defeated by the Babylonians in 586 BC. Spoken Hebrew was replaced by Aramaic, although it was preserved as the language of religion, learning, and literature. Hebrew became a spoken language again after the establishment of Jewish settlements, mostly from Russia. It became an official language of British Palestine in 1922. Today, it is the dominant official language of the State of Israel, along with Arabic and English, and remains the liturgical language of Jews worldwide.

Hebrew is used for official, public and private purposes throughout Israel, with the exception of the Arab sector, where Arabic is used. Government schools teach in either Hebrew or Arabic, however Hebrew is a compulsory subject through the tenth grade in all schools, even the Arabic ones. Hebrew is the medium of instruction at the university level as well. It is the language of most newspapers, books, magazines, radio, and television.

Israel Ruin

 

Yehuda

 

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
The revival of Hebrew is intimately associated with the name of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda,who was born in Russia and who came to Palestine, then a province of the Ottoman empire, in 1881 with revival plans for the Hebrew language. Ben-Yehuda wanted the Jews in Palestine to speak Hebrew exclusively. He settled in Jerusalem, planning to use it as the base for spreading his revivalist ideas throughout Palestine and the Diaspora. His plan was to make Hebrew the language of the home and of education, and to expand the Hebrew vocabulary to meet the demands of the society. He understood that if children could learn Hebrew from a young age in school, they would become proficient in it when they grew up. In this way, Hebrew would become a living language.
Dialects
Wailing Wall

There are two main dialects of Hebrew. The Europeanized dialect is spoken by Ashkenazi Jews of European descent. It is strongly influenced by Yiddish. The Oriental dialect is spoken by Sephardi Jews whose ancestors came to Israel from Middle Eastern countries. The name "Sephardic" comes from the Hebrew word Sefarad, 'Spain.' These Jews lived in Spain and Portugal from the Middle Ages until their persecution and mass expulsion from those countries in the last decades of the 15th century when they fled to the Middle East. Oriental Hebrew is strongly influenced by Arabic. Today, the Europeanized dialect enjoys greater social prestige and tends to be preferred by most young Israelis.

Although the Academy of the Hebrew Language attempts to establish standards, native speakers of Hebrew who now constituting a majority, have now created a variety, Spoken Israeli Hebrew, that has yet to be systematically described and standardized.

Structure

Sound System

Israeli Children

 

Israeli Children

 

Israeli Women

 

Israel

Hebrew is unique in that it was resurrected from being a written language to becoming one that is spoken today as a first language by millions of people.

Vowels
Spoken Israeli Hebrew has six vowel phonemes: /i/, /e/, /a/, /ə/, /o/, /u/. However, the phonemes /e/ and /ə/ have merged in the speech of most Israeli speakers. In Biblical Hebrew, each vowel had three forms: short, long and interrupted, however this distinction has been lost in Modern Hebrew. The term "interrupted vowel" refers to a vowel followed by a glottal stop.

Consonants
Consonants in Biblical Hebrew had several characterisitcs that are not present in Modern Hebrew, for example:

  • gemination, i.e., doubling of consonants;
  • spirantization, i.e., pronouncing a stop, as a fricative, e.g., pronouncing /b/ as a /v/;
  • pharyngealization, i.e., pronouncing consonants with constricted vocal cords;
  • loss of voiceless and voiced pharyngeal consonants, which are present in Arabic, but pronounced as velar stops /k/ and /g/ in in the speech of most Hebrew speakers, with the exception of those who speak the Oriental dialect.

Modern Hebrew has the following consonants:

x
Bilabial
Labio-dental
Alveolar
Post-alveolar
Palatal
Velar
Uvular
Glottal
Stops
/p/ -/b/
x
/t/ - / d/
x
 
/k/ - /g/
 
/?/
Fricatives
x
/f/ - /v/
/s/ - /z/
/š/ - /ž/
x
/χ/ - //
/h/
Affricates  
ts
 
/t/ - /d/
 
Nasals
/m/
/n/
x
x
x
Laterals
x
x
/l/
x
x
x
Approximants
x
/w/
x
/y/
x
x


? similar to the sound between the vowels in the English uh-oh
, no equivalents in English.
ts ts as in cats
sh as in shop
s as in pleasure
t ch as in chop
d j as in jay

Click here to listenClick here to listen to some basic words in Hebrew.

Grammar

Israel Script

 

Israel walkway

 

 

Grammar
The grammar of Hebrew is fairly typical of Semitic languages:

  • Many words consist of three consonants separated by vowels. Changes in the vowels or their omission affect word meaning, e.g., the root K-T-V produces katav, 'he wrote,' ktav,'writing,' katuv, 'written,' and miktava 'desk.'
  • Prefixes and suffixes are added to roots to modify word meaning and express grammatical relations.

Noun phrase
Hebrew nouns have the following characteristics:

  • Syntactic function of nouns in the sentence is represented by prepositions. The subject has no special marking.
  • Nouns have two genders: masculine and feminine, e.g., yeled. 'boy' and yalda, 'girl.'
  • There are two numbers: singular and plural. Plurals are formed by adding the ending -im to masculine nouns, e.g., yeled, 'boy' and yeledim, 'boys,' and -ot to feminine nouns, e.g., mita, 'bed' and mitot, 'beds.' Nouns may change their internal vowels when they take the plural ending.
  • Adjectives agree with nouns in number and gender.
  • The definite article ha- is placed both before the adjective and the noun, hence 'the big camel' is ha-yeled ha-gadol, literally 'the camel the big.'
  • To express possession, modern Hebrew uses the preposition shel, 'of,' as in ha-dal shel ha-beyt, 'the door of the house.' A direct object is marked by the preposition et-, e.g., Adam kara et ha-sefer 'Adam read the book.'

Numerals
Numerals are marked for gender, e.g., shney yeladim, 'two boys,' shtey yeladot, 'two girls.' Below are the numbers 1-10 in Hebrew.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
masculine
eh'ad
shnyim
shlosha
arba'a
h'amisha
shisha
shiv'a
shmona
tish'a
assara
feminine
ah'at
shtayim
shalosh
arba
h'amesh
shesh
sheva
shmone
tesha
tesha

Verb phrase
The verb system of Biblical Hebrew is quite complicated. Below are some of its most salient features:

  • Verbs agree with their subjects in person (1st, 2nd, 3rd), gender (masculine, feminine) and number (singular, plural).
  • There are three voices: active, middle, and passive.
  • Verbs are not marked for tense.
  • Verbs may be strong or weak.
  • There are two main verb forms: suffixed perfect and prefixed imperfect
  • Verbs have seven stems, each of which can be conjugated in 8 different ways. :
    Stem Action Voice Example
    1. Qal simple active He hurt.
    2. Nifal simple passive He was hurt.
    3. Piel intensive active He destroyed.
    4. Pual intensive passive He was destroyed
    5. Hilfil causal active He caused hurt.
    6. Hofal causal passive He was caused to hurt
    7. Hitpael intensive reflexive He hurt himself.

    The Qal stem is basic; all other stems are derived from it, and it accounts for two-thirds of all verbs.

Word order
The usual word order in modern Hebrew is Subject-Verb-Object. However, in Biblical Hebrew, the word order was typically Verb-Subject-Object. Modifiers follow the nouns they modify.

Vocabulary

Talmud

 

Talmud

Most of the basic vocabulary of Modern Hebrew comes from the Bible and the Talmud. Since Hebrew was not spoken for many centuries, it lacked many words needed to deal with the modern world, so many new words had to be added to the vocabulary. Some words were created from existing roots, the meaning of existing words was expanded to deal with new concepts, and a large number of words were borrowed from other languages, such as Arabic, German, Yiddish, Russian, and other European languages.

Below are some basic phrases and words in Hebrew (in transcription)

Shalom Hello (literally 'peace')
Lehitra’ot Good bye
Toda Thank you
Bevakasha Please
Slicha Excuse me, I am sorry.
Ken Yes
Lo No
Adam Man
'Ishsha Woman

 

Writing

scrolls

 

Hebrew Newspaper

 

Israel Scripture

When the Hebrews started using the Aramaic script for everyday use, reserving the Old Hebrew script for religious use only, the Aramaic script quickly became known as the Jewish script. Because of the shape of the letters, it was called the Square Script. The earliest preserved texts in the square script date back to the 5th century BC. Hebrew letters are not connected to each other, even in handwriting. They are written from right to left.

The Hebrew alphabet is a consonant-based syllabary. It consists of 22 consonants, five of which have a special word-final form. Vowels are generally not indicated. However, in some texts such as those for children, foreigners, prayer books, and Bibles, vowels can be represented by diacritics. Such texts are called vowelled or vocalized. Below are the letters of the Hebrew alphabet (from Wikipedia).

Hebrew Alphabet

Click here to listenClick here for a lesson in the Hebrew alphabet with images and sound.

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Hebrew in a traditional format (without vowels) and in one with the vowels indicated by diacritics.

Without vowels
Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Hebrew

With vowels
Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Hebrew vowels

Translation
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Clcik here to listenClick here to listen to the text of Article 1 in Hebrew.

Cider

 

Hebrew Man

 

 

Some Hebrew Words in English
English has many words of Hebrew origin, among them many biblical terms. A few of the loanwords are listed below:

English
from Hebrew
amen amen, 'truth'
cider shektar, word used for any strong drink
hallelujah hallalu-yah, 'praise Jehovah'
kibbutz 'Israeli collective settlement,' from qibbus, 'gathering'
leviathan livyathan, 'dragon, serpent, large sea animal'
manna man, literally 'substance exuded by the tamarisk tree.' Meaning of 'spiritual nourishment' is attested from 1382.
messiah mashiah, 'anointed' (of the Lord), from mashah, 'anoint'
rabbi rabbi, title of respect for Jewish doctors, from rabh, 'master, great one' + -i, first person singular. pronominal suffix. From the root R-B-B, 'to be great or numerous.'

Sabbath

shabbath, 'day of rest'

satan

satan, 'adversary, one who plots against another'


Resources
Resources

Click here to find out where Hebrew taught in the United States.
Click here to find materials for studying Hebrew.

Online resources for the study of Hebrew
Online Hebrew Tutorial
Foundation Stone - Online Hebrew Lessons
Wikipedia article on Hebrew
Wikipedia article on Hebrew alphabet
Alef-Bet on the Net
Hebrew Resources
Ethnologue report on Hebrew
UCLA Language Profile - Hebrew
Omniglot Hebrew Script
Basic Biblical Hebrew Grammar
Yamada Language Center Guide for Hebrew

 


How difficult is it to learn Hebrew?
Hebrew is a Category II language in terms of difficulty for speakers of English.
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