Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on December 31, 2023

Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:

Can you list the top facts and stats about Hebrew language?

Summarize this article for a 10 year old

SHOW ALL QUESTIONS

Hebrew (Hebrew alphabet: , vrt,

Northwest Semitic language

The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date back to the 10th century BCE.[17] 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. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Lashon Hakodesh ( , lit.'the holy tongue' or 'the tongue [of] holiness') since ancient times. The language was not referred to by the name Hebrew in the Bible, but as Yehudit (transl.'the language of Judah') or Spa Kna'an (transl."the language of Canaan").[1][note 2] 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.[18]

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.[19][20][note 3] Aramaic and, to a lesser extent, Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among societal elites and immigrants.[22] Hebrew survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and Jewish poetic literature. The first dated book printed in Hebrew was published by Abraham Garton in Reggio (Calabria, Italy) in 1475.[23] 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.

According to Ethnologue, Hebrew was spoken by five million people worldwide in 1998;[4] in 2013, it was spoken by over nine million people worldwide.[24] After Israel, the United States has the second-largest Hebrew-speaking population, with approximately 220,000 fluent speakers (see Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans).[25] Modern Hebrew and Arabic are the official languages of the State of Israel,[26] 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. As a non-first language, it is studied mostly by non-Israeli Jews and students in Israel, by archaeologists and linguists specializing in the Middle East and its civilizations, and by theologians in Christian seminaries.

Oops something went wrong:

Here is the original post:

Hebrew language - Wikiwand

Category: Hebrew
Tags: