Hebrew language

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Hebrew (ˈhiːbruː; Hebrew:עברית ʿivrit is a West Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, although the language was not referred to by the name Hebrew in the Tanakh. Later Hellenistic writers such as Josephus and the Gospel of John used the term Hebraisti to refer to both Hebrew and Aramaic. The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Today, Hebrew is spoken by a total of 9 million people worldwide.

Hebrew had ceased to be an everyday spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and immigrants. It survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. The United States has the second largest Hebrew speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, mostly from Israel.

Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of Israel (the other being Modern Standard Arabic), while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the liturgical tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. As a foreign language, it is studied mostly by Jews and students of Judaism and Israel, and by archaeologists and linguists specializing in the Middle East and its civilizations, as well as by theologians in Christian seminaries.

The Torah (the first five books), and most of the rest of the Hebrew Bible, is written in Biblical Hebrew, with much of its present form specifically in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, around the time of the Babylonian captivity. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh (לשון הקדש), "the Holy Language", since ancient times.

Phonology

See Also Hebrew phonology

Consonants

The Hebrew word for consonants is ‘itsurim (עיצורים). The following table lists the Hebrew consonants and their pronunciation in IPA transcription:

Consonants
Note: The voiceless consonants in left, and The voiced consonants in right.	Labial		Coronal			Dorsal				Laryn- geal
	Bilabial	Labio- Dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular		Glottal
Nasal	m			n
Plosive	p b			t d			k g			ʔ
Affricate				ts
Fricative		f v		s z	ʃ			χ	ʁ	h
Approximant						j			ʁ	h
Lateral Approximant				l

The pairs /b, v/, /k, x/ and /p, f/ have historically been allophonic, as a consequence of the phenomenon of spirantization known as "begadkefat". In Modern Hebrew, however, all six sounds are phonemic, due to mergers involving formerly distinct sounds (/v/ merging with /w/, /k/ merging with /q/, /x/ merging with /ħ/), loss of consonant gemination (which formerly distinguished the stop members of the pairs from the fricatives when intervocalic), and the introduction of syllable-initial /f/ through foreign borrowings.

ע was once pronounced as a voiced pharyngeal fricative. Most modern Ashkenazi Jews do not differentiate between א and ע; however, Mizrahi Jews and Arabs pronounce these phonemes. Georgian Jews pronounce it as a glottalized q. Western European Sephardim and Dutch Ashkenazim traditionally pronounce it [ŋ] (like ng in sing)-- a pronunciation which can also be found in the Italian tradition and, historically, in south-west Germany. (The remnants of this pronunciation are found throughout the Ashkenazi world, in the name "Yankl" and "Yanki", diminutive forms of Jacob, Heb. יעקב.)

Historical sound changes

Standard (non-Oriental) Israeli Hebrew (SIH) has undergone a number of splits and mergers in its development from Biblical Hebrew.<ref>Robert Hetzron. (1987). Hebrew. In The World's Major Languages, ed. Bernard Comrie, 686–704. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-520521-9.</ref>

BH /b/ had two allophones, [b] and [v]; the [v] allophone has merged with /w/ into SIH /v/
BH /k/ had two allophones, [k] and [x]; the [k] allophone has merged with /q/ into SIH /k/, while the [x] allophone has merged with /ħ/ into SIH /χ/
BH /t/ and /tˤ/ have merged into SIH /t/
BH /ʕ/ and /ʔ/ have usually merged into SIH /ʔ/, but this distinction may also be upheld in educated speech of many Sephardim and some Ashkenazim
BH /p/ had two allophones, [p] and [f]; the incorporation of loanwords into Modern Hebrew has probably resulted in a split, so that /p/ and /f/ are separate phonemes.

Dagesh

Hebrew also has dagesh, a phonological process of consonant strengthening that is indicated in fully-pointed texts by a dot placed in the center of a consonant. There are two kinds of strengthenings: light (kal, known also as dagesh lene) and heavy (hazak or dagesh forte). The light version applies to the phonemes /b/ /k/ /p/ (historically, also /ɡ/, /d/ and /t/), causing them to be pronounced as stops rather than fricatives, and operates when the dagesh occurs in the beginning of a word or after a consonant (i.e. a silent shva). The heavy dagesh occurs after vowels and applies to all consonants except gutturals and /r/, originally causing them to be pronounced as geminate (doubled) consonants; it also selects the stop allophone of /b/, /k/, /p/, etc. (In Modern Hebrew, gemination has disappeared, and the hence the heavy dagesh has a phonological effect only on /b/ /k/ /p/, affecting them the same as the light dagesh.) Traditional Hebrew grammar distinguishes two sub-categories of the heavy dagesh according to their historical origin: structural heavy (hazak tavniti) and complementing heavy (hazak mashlim). . Structural heavy dagesh corresponds to consonant doubling that was inherited from Proto-Semitic, and occurs in certain verb conjugations and noun patterns (mishkalim and binyanim; see the section on grammar below). Complementing heavy dagesh corresponds to consonant doubling that arose within Hebrew as a result of consonant assimilation, most commonly of an /n/ to a following consonant (e.g. Biblical Hebrew /attā/ "you (m. sg.)" vs. Classical Arabic /anta/).

Vowels

See Also Niqqud

thumb|300px|right|The vowel phonemes of Modern Israeli Hebrew The Hebrew word for vowels is tnu'ot (תְּנוּעוֹת). The orthographic representations for these vowels are called Niqqud. Israeli Hebrew has 5 vowel phonemes, represented by the following Niqqud-signs:

phoneme	pronunciation in Modern Hebrew	approximate pronunciation in English	orthographic representation
phoneme	pronunciation in Modern Hebrew	approximate pronunciation in English	"long" *	"short" *	"very short" / "interrupted" *
/a/	[ä]	(as in "spa")	kamats ( ָ )	patach ( ַ )	chataf patach ( ֲ )
/e/	[e̞]	(as in "bet")	tsere male ( ֵי ) or tsere chaser ( ֵ )	segol ( ֶ )	chataf segol ( ֱ ), sometimes shva ( ְ )
/i/	[i]	(as in "ski")	chirik male ( ִי )	chirik chaser ( ִ )
/o/	[o̞]	(as in "gore")	cholam male ( וֹ ) or cholam chaser ( ֹ )	kamatz katan ( ָ )	chataf kamatz ( ֳ )
/u/	[u]	(as in "flu" but with no diphthongization)	shuruk (וּ)	kubuts ( ֻ )
* The severalfold orthographic representation of each phoneme attests to the broader phonemic range of vowels in earlier forms of Hebrew. Some linguists still regard the Hebrew grammatical entity of Shva na—marked as Shva (ְ)—as representing a sixth phoneme, /ə/.

In Biblical Hebrew, each vowel had three forms: short, long and interrupted (chataf). However, there is no audible distinction between the three in modern Israeli Hebrew, except that tsere is often pronounced [eɪ] as in Ashkenazi Hebrew.

Shva

See Also shva

The Niqqud sign "Shva" represents four grammatical entities: resting (nach / נָח), moving (na' / נָע), floating (merahef / מְרַחֵף) and "bleating" or "bellowing" ('ga'ya' / גַּעְיָּה). In earlier forms of Hebrew, these entities were phonologically and phonetically distinguishable. However, in Modern Hebrew these distinctions are not observed. For example, the (first) Shva Nach in the word קִמַּטְתְ (fem. you crumpled) is pronounced [e̞] ([kiˈmate̞t]) even though it should be mute, whereas the Shva Na in זְמַן (time), which theoretically should be pronounced, is usually mute ([zman]). Sometimes the shva is pronounced like a tsere when accented, as in the prefix "ve" meaning "and".

Stress

Hebrew has two frequent kinds of lexical stress, on the last syllable (milrá; מלרע) and on the penultimate syllable (the one preceding the last, mil‘él; מלעיל), of which the first is more frequent. Contrary to the prescribed standard, some words exhibit a stress on the antepenultimate syllable or even further back. This occurs often in loanwords, e.g. פּוֹלִיטִיקָה /poˈlitika/, "politics", and sometimes in native Hebrew words, e.g. אֵיכְשֶׁהוּ <ref> Morfix dictionary – אֵיכְשֶׁהוּ</ref>/ˈeχʃehu/, "somehow"; אֵיפֹשֶׁהוּ /ˈefoʃehu/, "somewhere". Colloquial stress is also often shifted from the last syllable to the penultimate, contrary to the prescribed standard, e.g. כּוֹבַע, normative stress /koˈvaʕ/, colloquial stress /ˈkovaʕ/ "hat"; שׁוֹבָךְ normative stress /ʃoˈvaχ/, colloquial stress /ˈʃovaχ/, "dovecote". This is also common in the colloquial pronunciation of many personal names, for example דָּוִד normative stress /daˈvid/, colloquial stress /ˈdavid/, "David".<ref>Netser, Nisan, Niqqud halakha le-maase, 1976, p. 11.</ref>

Specific rules correlate the location or absence of stress in a syllable with the written representation of vowel length and whether or not the syllable ends with a vowel or a consonant.<ref>Theses rules are sometimes slightly different for verbs and nouns; thus the stress in the noun דָּבָר (/daˈvar/, "thing") and the verb גָּבַר (/ɡaˈvar/ "to overpower") are both on the last syllable, even though this syllable is pointed with the sign for a long vowel for the noun and for a short vowel for the verb. Modern classification of vowel diacritics according to the vowel length they allegedly denote, however, might not concur with the historically correct phonological distinction between vowel lengths, see Tiberian vocalization → Full vowels.</ref> Since spoken Israeli Hebrew does not distinguish between long and short vowels, these rules are not evident in speech. They usually cannot be inferred from written text either, since usually vowel diacritics are omitted. The result is that nowadays stress has phonemic value, as the following table illustrates: acoustically, the following word pairs differ only in the location of the stress; orthographically they differ also in the written representation of the length of the vowels, however if vowel diacritics are omitted (as is usually the case in Modern Israeli Hebrew) they are written identically:

common spelling (Ktiv Hasar Niqqud)	mil‘él-stressed			milrá-stressed
common spelling (Ktiv Hasar Niqqud)	spelling with vowel diacritics	pronunciation	translation	spelling with vowel diacritics	pronunciation	translation
ילד	יֶלֶד	/ˈjeled/	boy	יֵלֵד	/jeˈled/	will give birth
אוכל	אֹכֶל	/ˈoχel/	food	אוֹכֵל	/oˈχel/	eating (masculine singular participle)
בוקר	בֹּקֶר	/ˈbokeʁ/	morning	בּוֹקֵר	/boˈkeʁ/	cowboy

Little ambiguity exists, however, due to context and syntactic features; compare e.g. the English word "conduct" in its nominal and verbal forms.

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