• Hebrew is a Semitic language of the spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Jewish communities around the world.

• The Semitic languages are a family of languages spoken by more than 300 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and East Africa. The widely spoken Semitic languages today are Arabic (270 million total speakers), Amharic (27 million language speakers), Tigrinya (about 6.7 million total speakers) and Hebrew (8 million speakers).

Intro

The history of the Hebrew language is usually divided into four major periods

Biblical/Classical

Biblical, or Classical, Hebrew, until about the 3rd century BC, in which most of the Old Testament is written; Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Lĕshôn Ha-Qôdesh (לשון הקודש), "The Holy Tongue", since ancient times.

Mishnaic/Rabbinic

• the language of the Mishna (a collection of Jewish traditions), written about AD 200 (this form of Hebrew was never used among the people as a spoken language)

Medieval Hebrew

• from about the 6th to the 13th century AD, when many words were borrowed from Greek, Spanish, Arabic, and other languages;

Modern Hebrew

The language of Israel in modern time

Modern Hebrew, based on the biblical language, contains many innovations designed to meet modern needs; it is the only colloquial speech based on a written language.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda

• Because of its large disuse for centuries, Hebrew lacked many modern words. Several were adapted as recently created from the Hebrew Bible or borrowed from Yiddish and other languages by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. Modern Hebrew became an official language in British-ruled Palestine in 1921 (along with English and Arabic), and then in 1948 became an official language of the newly declared State of Israel.

The language is written from right to left in a Semitic script of 22 letters

VowelsIsraeli Hebrew has 6 vowel phonemes

/a/ (as in "spa")

/e/ (as in "café")

/i/ (as in "ski")

/o/ (as in "go")

/u/ (as in "flu")

/ə/ (as in "about")

VowelsIsraeli Hebrew has 6 vowel phonemes

א Iב Kא Fatherלום Iש Peace/Hello/Goodbye

ל Oא Iישרן Oאמ

ה Iמור Teacher (Female)

Write your name in Hebrew

!כתבי את שמך בעברית