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"Mchh Mchh Mcht, Chht Chht Mchht..."
"Hey! You speak fluent Hebrew!"
"Nah, just clearing my throat"
....................................- Non-Hebrew speakers on Hebrew

When we are testing the era of the beginning of the script in archaeological sources, we might find out that at the same time there were in the area of the Middle East some similar languages, as Accadian and Aramaic. These languages have a similar design, a common basic vocabulary and phonemic similarities (pronunciations that considered to be noticeable one from the other), that can not be casual.

The same design frequents by the method of roots and scales. According to it, most of the words of the Semitic languages are assembled by a basic that usually includes three consonants (rarely four or five), which are changing due to the different ‘scales’, the declensions. Linguists name that insertion of the root into a declension ‘pouring’.
For example, the root כ-ת-ב (k-t-v) could be ‘poured’ into כתבנו (katávnu, we wrote), מכתב (michtáv, a letter), התכתבות (hitkatvút, correspondence) and so on.
The similarity in vocabulary includes many words and basics roots, as the words אב (av, a father), עין (áin, eye), ארץ (éretz, earth) and the roots כ-ת-ב (see example aforementioned), א-כ-ל (a-ch-l) and ר-א-ה (r-a-h).



The most ancient script that has ever been founded belongs to the Sumerians who lived in Mesopotamia about 5000 years ago. It was a picturesque alphabet, and each painting constituted a specific term. As time went by, these paintings turned into signs of syllables and got abstracted figures that were assembled by pegs-like lines. It included about 600 signs and functioned in the writing of other languages that were common in Mesopotamia. A while after the Sumerian script appeared, the Egyptian was invented – the hieroglyphics. This script was even more picturesque.
In Canaan, at the 15 century BCE, the alphabetic script, that included a little number of signs, has been created. The common assumption says this alphabet was developed from the hieroglyphics, when the Semitic population simplified the complicated hieroglyphics and turned into a pure phonetic script. At first the Canaanite script indicated consonants only, but after a while, the use of signs for vowels was added to it. The ancient Hebraic alphabet is one of the varieties of the Canaanitic alphabet.
The Phoenician alphabet came from the Canaanitic one; the Greek, Latin and Aramaic-Assyrian alphabets came from it. The Aramaic alphabet was pretty close to the Phoenician alphabet, but its letters were square. The Hebraic script characterized in a unique alphabet, which includes 22 letters and other graphic signs (that are comparatively late developments) to function mainly as vowels. The square alphabet that is known today is a version of the “international” Aramaic script of the Persian kingdom, and it changes (during to the tradition – according to the decision of Ezra the scribe) the Phoenician-Hebraic alphabet that known also as “Daatz (or Raatz) script” that being used in Yehuda kingdom, Israel kingdom and around the Middle East before the Babylonian exile. It was probably a long, gradual process, which stem from the need to be separated from the Samaritans that keep using the ancient Hebraic alphabet.
Even after the destruction of the Second Temple the ancient Hebraic alphabet has been in use, only after the revolt of Bar-Kochva.
Hebrew has only 22 letters and is written from the right to the left. It has two “writing systems”, one of them, the more familiar one, is based on the square letter form. The second system is used for handwriting, and has more circular form.

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The name עבר (Éver) had been shown in the Bible as the name of Abraham's grandfather. The term עברי (Ivrí) is mentioned in the Bible many times, but the language of the Hebrews is not being called ‘Hebrew’.
The term “Hebraic script” in “Chazal Tongue” indicated the Aramaic handwrite that named after עבר הנהר (Éver Hanahár, the opposite side of the river).
The most famous collection that ever been written in the Hebrew language is the Bible, although the name of the language is not mentioned there. At those times, the language of the Bible named “the Bible Tongue” or “the Holy Tongue” to separate it from “Chazal Tongue” or “the Smarts’ Tongue”, that is actually a late dialect of Hebrew.
The most famous collection ever written in Hebrew is the Bible, although the name of the language is not mentioned there. Nevertheless, in Kings 2 chapter 18, 26 and in Isaiah chapter 36, 11, told that the messengers of the king Hezekiah were asking Rabshakeh, the messenger of Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, to speak to them in Aramaic and not in ‘Yehudit’ (Jewish), so the people – that probably did not speak Aramaic – will not understand their sayings. It seems that that was the name of the language, or at least the name of the dialect that was spoken in Jerusalem.
The Hebrew word for the name of the language, ‘Ivrít’, is derived from the root עבר (Éver), which means side or direction.


The Hebrew language is one of the most ancient languages which are still spoken. From the days of the Bible to our days, the Jews never stopped speaking it. During the Biblical era it was a spoken and written language, but the process of its conversion to “the Holy Tongue” – the language of learning and praying – already started at Chazal era; then, the spoken language was one of the non-Jewish surroundings: at first Aramaic or Greek, then the spoken language of the place where the Jews were lived, or dialects that combined between it to Hebrew (like Yiddish, Latino and Megabit). The Zionism, as a national movement, saw the language as a necessary national lineament and took the resuscitation of the Hebrew upon itself – its turnover from a holy tongue to everyday tongue. After a long period when the Hebrew was the language of smart students only, now it is the official language of Israel, a living language.


The Hebrew of the Diaspora era, in it the tongue of the Middle Ages, is a long period that been started in the 200 to the Christian counting and continues 1700 years after. It wonted to divide the Diaspora period to a few secondary eras: the poetry, the Middle Ages, the enlightenment and some more. During this period, the Hebrew was mainly a “Holy Tongue”: Jews prayed in Hebrew three times a day, studied the Bible in Hebrew at Schabbat, but most of them did not spoke it at the everyday.
Even when the Hebrew stopped being a popular language that was in wide and daily use, the Hebrew functioned as a Franca Lingua between Jews from different countries, for example, for businesses or religious questions. According to the testimonies of some passengers, the Hebrew was, in some periods, a spoken language among the Jewish community that lived in Israel. It was also a spoken language among missioners, educated and even some kings who were interested in it.
Although the Hebrew lost its status as a spoken language, it kept its important status in writing. Poets wrote songs in Hebrew, Rabbis were corresponding about law matters in Hebrew and philosophers wrote their thoughts in Hebrew.
The Hebrew poetry that been written during the 6 to the 9 centuries enriched the language in new meanings to old words in innovation words. So the poets of Spain who influenced the language during the years 900 to 1250 kept enriching it: at these times, about 2000 or 3000 new words in the boundaries of science, philosophy and religion, were added to the language. Some of them were created by giving new meaning to old roots: for example, the word גדר (gadér, fence) received the meaning of הגדרה (hagdará, definition). Other words were based on existing words in Hebrew, which were ‘poured’ into new scales, like כמות (kamút, quantity) from the word כמה (káma, sundry). Other words were penetrated from foreign tongues, mainly from Greek and Arabic, such as the words אקלים (aklím, climate) and טבעי (tivyí, natural).
When “the Committee of the Hebrew Tongue” published its list of account terms in 1912, it included some innovations to terms from the literature of the Middle Ages, as שארית (sheerít, residue), פסיק (psik, comma), ערך משולש (érech meshulásh, rule of three) and so on.
From 1105 to 1140 in the Middle Aged France lived the poet and the greatest commentator of the Bible, Rabi Shlomo Yitzchaki, or “Rashi”. Many of the lingual innovations he renewed are still in use today, like השאלה (hash'álá, lending), מתעקש (mit'akésh, insisting), שקידה (shkidá, diligence), תמוה (tamóha, peculiar) and so on.
The research and the Kabala literature have also minted idiomatic phrases which are still in use, such as יש מאין (yesh meayín, something out of nothing), בגילופין (begilufín, tipsily), יחידי סגולה (yechideyí sgulá, the elects) and so on.
From the end of the 18 century and on, besides the rising of the Enlightenment movement, the Hebrew had progressively started to get the identity of a modern language, and being branched out in the life's limits. This period, that begun in the Diaspora and ended in Israel, is called “the Renaissance of Hebrew”.


The Enlightenment movement
The decisive contribution to the regeneration of the Hebrew language known as the Enlightenment movement (1780-1881), which called to enable Jews to adopt the cultures of the nations they were living amongst. During this period, Hebrew was taught in general studies and been written in poems, stories and newspaper. At the first years (1780-1855) the language been in use in articles related to Biblical stories and was written in the Biblical Hebrew. The authors had not seen those ‘creations’ as a part of a national regeneration movement, but as a donation to the Jewish culture in the Diaspora, for the progress of a rational thinking and of aesthetic values.
In the second stage of the movement, which was called “the realistic period” (1855-1881), more foreign literature been translated than before and the immediate result was that more realistic literary was written in Hebrew. The Biblical Hebrew has been considered as too ornate and obsolete to be used as an exclusive source for this literature, and the writers started using Chazal's and the Middle Ages' Hebrew, along with renewing words and adopting new concepts.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
At the end of the 19th century, the enlightenment movement and the Jewish nationality caused a changeover concerning to the capacity of the Hebrew. From a “sanctified” language of literature and learning, it turned into a spoken language of the everyday. This function is mainly ascribed to Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, a Jewish-Lithuanian journalist and linguist. In 1880, he published two articles named “to the Question of Education” in “the Sand-Lily” weekly, calling through them to lead the Hebrew as the instruction language of the educational institutions in Israel. In 1881 he immigrated to Israel with the First Aliya and started to teach “Hebrew in Hebrew” at “Pentateuch and Handicrafts” school in Jerusalem.
Already in 1891 the Hebrew was taught in some provinces of the Galilee, and until 1897 there were 20 schools in Israel where Jewish subjects were taught in Hebrew.

The Languages’ Controversy
In 1919, Ben-Yehuda published the first volume of his “Dictionary of the Old and Modern Hebrew”. Out of a list of 250 words he renewed, only 160 been accepted.
Three years after, the Hebrew stood in an overwhelming cross-road. After building educational institutions where the lectured language was Hebrew during the first decade of its action in Israel, “the Assistance Company for the German Jews” decided to build the Institute of Technology (the “Technikom”) in and the secondary school for natural sciences, where the lectured language would be German.
That decision constituted the opening shot of a long struggle, which was called “the Languages’ War”. Teachers and students of the teachers’ seminar in Jerusalem, which was ran by a movement called “Ezra”, quit and gave the active director of the movement, Dr. Paul Natan, a memorandum where they demanded to customise the Hebrew as the lectured language for all of the scientific courses. When his answer hasn’t satisfied them, several teachers quit their jobs. After that, the Zionist executive committee opened the Realistic Hebrew School, where all the students and the teachers who registered transferred to, and also opened a Hebrew Beit Midrash (“House of Interpretation”) for teachers.

In February, 1914 the “Languages’ War” came to its end when the Hebrew side won: “Ezra” movement agreed that the lectured language for physics and math in the “Technikom” would be Hebrew, and that all teachers and professors who are not experienced in Hebrew would be obligated to learn the language within four years. After four years the headstone of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was placed. When opened, in 1925, almost all lessons were lectured in Hebrew, whether the subject was related to Judaism or to nature sciences.

The British Mandate Years
The years of the British Mandate were the years when the Hebrew became established as the spoken language of the Jewish population in Israel. At the year of 1912 the Hebrew got a position of one of the three official languages of Israel, at the side of Arabic and English. An extensive literature and press in Hebrew started to rise among the Jews, while various layers of the spoken language had been created. Although Hebrew was not the native tongue of the immigrates who came to Israel during the Second, Third and Fourth immigrations, the cultural and educational infrastructures of Hebrew already been strong enough to be adopted by the immigrants as their own spoken language.