Hebrew

Hebrew (also called Cibri or Hebrew) is a language in the Semitic language family, itself part of the larger Afroasiatic family. It is one of the official languages of Israel and is written in Hebrew characters from right to left. The basic alphabet has 22 letters, and it is customary that vowels are not written in ordinary texts, with meaning derived from sentence context and word structure.

Hebrew has a long history divided into two periods: ancient Hebrew, in which Jewish religious texts were written, and modern Hebrew, revived in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to become a spoken everyday language. In the intervening centuries, spanning many centuries, Hebrew primarily functioned as a written language for religion and learning, while Jewish communities spoke other everyday languages such as Yiddish, Ladino, or Arabic.

Writing and pronunciation

The writing system is based on consonantal letters (abjad). To indicate pronunciation, particularly in religious texts, children's books, and language instruction, nikud—small marks placed below, above, or within letters—are used to show vowels. Like other Semitic languages, most words derive from roots (xidid) of three consonants, which undergo various patterns to produce nouns and verbs. For example, the root k-t-b/k-t-v relates to the concept of writing.

Historical periods

Biblical Hebrew was the form used in much of the Tanakh. It was followed by Mishnaic Hebrew, in which Jewish legal texts from the early centuries CE were written. In the medieval period, Hebrew was a language of science, poetry, philosophy, and correspondence among Jewish communities in various regions. At that time, local languages, particularly Arabic, influenced the vocabulary of science and philosophy.

Revival and modern Hebrew

From the late nineteenth century onward, cultural and political movements worked to make Hebrew an everyday spoken language in home and school. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was among those most famous for this work, particularly in creating new words and compiling a dictionary. Modern Hebrew is taught in Israeli schools and is used in government, media, business, and literature. It has borrowed many words from Russian, Yiddish, German, and English, and continues to preserve the root-formation pattern characteristic of Semitic languages.