Hebrew

Hebrew is one of the official languages of the State of Israel, along with Arabic. It is spoken in Israel and in many Jewish communities around the world, and you are likely to find Hebrew speakers where there are large Jewish communities, for example in the USA (where there are more than five million Jews), France (approximately 490,000 Jews) and Canada (approximately 375,000 Jews). The Hebrew language found in the Bible (the other language of the Bible being Aramaic) is considered Classical or Biblical Hebrew. Semitic languages such as Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew pose certain challenges in translation, which are better understood with a deeper knowledge of those languages. So here are a few facts about Hebrew to help the reader gain some understanding of this language.

Hebrew Quick Facts:

Estimated 9 million Speakers around the world mainly in Israel
It is the language of the Hebrew Bible and of the Old Testament of the Christians. The core of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, traditionally believed to have been first recorded in the time of Moses 3,300 years ago, is written in Classical Hebrew.
History of language dates back to 586 BC but it died out as a spoken language after the Jews were defeated by the Babylonians. It revived as a spoken language during the late 19th and early 20th century as Modern Hebrew
There is one Hebrew language, but it has two different scripts. One of these scripts fell into complete disuse and was forgotten 2000 years ago. The lost script is called Ivri or Paleo-Hebrew. Our familiar Hebrew script is known as Ashuri or Assyrian script.
The earliest known alphabet used for writing Hebrew is one belonging to the Canaanite group of Semitic languages. With the Jewish peoples’ adaptation of Aramaic script, this Early Hebrew later evolved into a script known as Square Hebrew. Square Hebrew is the source of modern written Hebrew, although today’s written Hebrew generally uses a more recently developed cursive-style script.
Major Hebrew Dialects: The Europeanized dialect is spoken by Ashkenazi Jews of European descent. It is strongly influenced by Yiddish. The Oriental dialect is spoken by Sephardi Jews whose ancestors came to Israel from Middle Eastern countries. The name “Sephardic” comes from the Hebrew word Sefarad, ‘Spain’. These Jews lived in Spain and Portugal from the Middle Ages until their persecution and mass expulsion from those countries in the last decades of the 15th century when they fled to the Middle East. Oriental Hebrew is strongly influenced by Arabic.
Hebrew is classified as Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family