Language Centre Resources - Hebrew

An Afro-Asiatic language and a member of the Semitic group, spoken by approx. 5 million speakers in Israel, where it is the official language, and, with varying levels of fluency, by some 10 million Jews all over the world; Modern Israeli Hebrew is also known as Ivrit.

The earliest attested period is Classical or Biblical Hebrew, best known as the language of the Old Testament, spanning from c. 12th to the 2nd century BC. The language was spoken throughout ancient Palestine until about the 3rd century BC, when it gave way to Aramaic, but continued to be the liturgical and literary language of Judaism. Mishnaic Hebrew is a later form of the language, represented by the collection of rabbinical literature, the most prominent of which is the Mishnah, a collection of Hebrew treatises on Jewish law, written in the 1st century AD. Medieval Hebrew continued to be in use in religion and scholarship between the 6th and 13th centuries.

Modern Hebrew, revived as a spoken language in the 19th century, was declared the official language of Israel in 1948. The vocabulary of the language is largely based on Biblical Hebrew and the syntax on Mishnaic Hebrew. The language is written from right to left and uses the Hebrew alphabet, consisting of 22 characters. It is derived from the Aramaic script, based on the Phoenician prototype. There are two varieties of orthography: xaser, observed in literary style, and male, used in conversational style and also in the press.

CLASSIFICATION = Afro-Asiatic family     SCRIPT = Hebrew alphabet