# Hebrew language

| Hebrew |
| --- |
| עִבְרִית, *Ivrit* |
| Portion of the Isaiah Scroll, a second-century BCE manuscript of the Biblical Book of Isaiah and one of the best-preserved of the Dead Sea Scrolls |
| Pronunciation | Modern: [ivˈʁit] Tiberian: [ʕivˈriθ] Biblical: [ʕibˈrit] |
| Native to | Israel
Syria
Eritrea (Only in israeli Milltary base) |
| Region | Southern Levant |
| Extinct | Mishnaic Hebrew extinct as a spoken language by the 5th century CE, surviving as a liturgical language along with Biblical Hebrew for Judaism |
| Revival | Revived in the late 19th century CE. 9 million speakers of Modern Hebrew, of which 5 million are native speakers and 3.3 million are second language speakers (2018) |
| Language family | Afroasiatic
* Semitic
	+ West
		- Central
			* Northwest
				+ Canaanite
					- South
						* **Hebrew**
 |
| Early forms | Biblical Hebrew
* Mishnaic Hebrew
	+ Medieval Hebrew
 |
| Standard forms | * Modern
* Samaritan
 |
| Dialects | * Israelian †
 |
| Writing system | Hebrew alphabet Hebrew Braille Paleo-Hebrew alphabet (Archaic Biblical Hebrew) Imperial Aramaic script (Late Biblical Hebrew) Samaritan script (Samaritan Biblical Hebrew) |
| Signed forms | Signed Hebrew (oral Hebrew accompanied by sign) |
| Official status |
| Official language in | Israel (as Modern Hebrew) |
| Recognised minority language in | Poland
* South Africa
* Turkey
 |
| Regulated by | Academy of the Hebrew Language האקדמיה ללשון העברית (*ha-akademyah la-lashon ha-ʿivrit*) |
| Language codes |
| ISO 639-1 | `he` |
| ISO 639-2 | `heb` |
| ISO 639-3 | Variously: `heb` – Modern Hebrew `hbo` – Classical Hebrew (liturgical) `smp` – Samaritan Hebrew (liturgical) `obm` – Moabite (extinct) `xdm` – Edomite (extinct) |
| *Glottolog* | `hebr1246` |
| Linguasphere | `12-AAB-a` |
|

The word IVRIT ("Hebrew") written in modern Hebrew language (top) and in Paleo-Hebrew alphabet (bottom)
The **Hebrew language**, also referred to as the **Hebraic language**, is a Northwest Semitic language and is related to Arabic. It is the only dead language that has been revived.

*Israeli Hebrew* and *Biblical Hebrew* are separate languages with different grammar and different pronunciation, though speakers of Israeli Hebrew can usually read most of the Hebrew Bible.

## Israeli Hebrew

*Biblical Hebrew* was spoken by the Israelites during the time of the composition of the Hebrew Bible but became rare in daily life after the Jews were forced to speak Aramaic.

In the 20th-century, Eliezer ben Yehuda was the leading force behind the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language and the primary inventor of *Israeli Hebrew*, which became the official language of modern Israel in 1948.

Many words used in *Biblical Hebrew* to write the Hebrew Bible are given different meanings in *Israeli Hebrew*.

## Grammar

Generally, Hebrew words are made by adding a vowel pattern to a root, though *Israeli Hebrew* has loanwords from many languages. People often need to study the grammar of Hebrew before they can read fluently without written vowels.

In *Israeli Hebrew*, the verb for "to be" has a future tense and a past tense but no present tense. In *Biblical Hebrew*, there are no tenses but only two aspects: perfective and imperfective. One way to describe this is a difference between past (*perfective*) and non-past (*imperfective*), though they can overlap. *Biblical Hebrew* has a special feature to explicitly mark a verb with somewhat of a future tense, which is the Vav Conversive.

*Mishnaic Hebrew* and Judeo-Aramaic were spoken at the time of Jesus and the time of the Bar-Kokhba revolt.

The Hebrew script was adapted to write Yiddish, which is a language that has Hebrew vocabulary and was adapted from German and a few other Indo-European languages.

| **Aleph\ | **Bet** | **Gimel** | **Dalet** | **He** | **Vav** | **Zayin** | **Khet** | **Tet** | **Yud** | **Kaph** |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| א | ב | ג | ד | ה | ו | ז | ח | ט | י | כ |
| ך |
| **Lamed** | **Mem** | **Nun** | **Samekh** | **Ayin** | **Pe** | **Tsadi** | **Kuf** | **Resh** | **Shin** | **Tav** |
| ל | מ | נ | ס | ע | פ | צ | ק | ר | ש | ת |
| ם | ן | ף | ץ |

## Related pages

* Phoenician alphabet