Hebrew Language, Semitic language originally adopted by the 'ibhri, orIsraelites, when they took possession of the land of Canaan westof the Jordan River in Palestine. The language has also been calledthe speech of Canaan, and Judean, after the kingdom of Judah.Ancient Hebrew, the language of the Bible, was succeeded by anintermediary form, Mishnaic Hebrew, about the 3rd century BC.Modern Hebrew, the only vernacular tongue based on an ancientwritten form, was developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Biblical Hebrew

The language in whichmost of the Old Testament was written dates, as a living language,from the 12th to the 2nd century BC, at the latest. The territoryof Phoenicia adjoined Canaan, and it is probable that Hebrew inits earliest form was almost identical to Phoenician; of the closelyrelated Hebrew and Phoenician language groups, however, Hebrewis decidedly the more important. From about the 3rd century BCthe Jews in Palestine came to use Aramaic in both speech and secularwritings. Jews outside Palestine spoke in the language of thecountries in which they had settled. Hebrew was preserved, however,as the language of ritual and sacred writing and through the centurieshas undergone periodic literary revivals.

The original Hebrew alphabetconsisted only of consonants, vowel signs and pronunciation currentlyaccepted for biblical Hebrew were created by scholars known asMasoretes after the 5th century AD. These scholars are thoughtalso to have standardized various dialectal differences.

The vocabulary of biblicalHebrew is small. Concrete adjectives are used for abstract nouns.The paucity of particles, which connect and relate ideas, andthe limitation to two verb tenses (perfect and imperfect) causean ambiguity regarding time concepts; various syntactic deviceswere employed to clarify relations of time. A past action wasindicated by the first in a series of verbs being in the perfecttense and all following verbs in the imperfect; for present orfuture action the first verb is in the imperfect tense and allsubsequent ones in the perfect.

Postbiblical Hebrew

Mishnaic or rabbinic Hebrew,dating from about AD 200, was the language of the Mishnah. Itwas solely a written language but was more adaptable to practicaluse than biblical Hebrew. The vocabulary and syntactic innovationswere strongly Aramaic, and words were borrowed from Greek, Latin,and Persian. New meanings and forms were given to biblical Hebrewwords, and the expressions of time were clarified. Hebrew vocabularywas further augmented in the Middle Ages by the Arabic influenceon philosophic writing and through translations of Arabic philosophicaland scientific works. From the 9th century on, the use of Hebrewdeclined.

Modern Hebrew

When Jews moved to Palestinein the 19th century, Hebrew was revived as a spoken language.Modern Hebrew, Ivrit, was declared the official languageof Israel in 1948. The language is written from right to leftand employs an alphabet of 22 characters; the vocabulary is basedon biblical Hebrew and the syntax on Mishnaic Hebrew. Long vowelsare generally expressed in writing by unpronounced consonant sounds.Scriptures, children's books, and poetry use the Masoretic points,which are dots or dashes to indicate vowels. Pronunciation ismodeled on that of the Sephardic Jews who live mainly in Turkey,Greece, and Bulgaria. A great number of new words, particularlyscientific terms, were needed in order to adapt the ancient writtenlanguage to contemporary use; the Lithuanian-born scholar Eliezerben Yehuda single-handedly coined 4000 new words from biblicalHebrew roots. The national languages of Israeli immigrants andYiddish, the language of the Ashkenazi, or Eastern European Jews,have also influenced modern Hebrew.