The Modern Hebrew language is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. What makes it unique is that the original Hebrew Bible, the Torah, that Judaism teaches to have been recorded in the time of Moses 3,300 years ago,
was written in (Biblical) Classical Hebrew. Jews have always called it the לשון הקודש Leshon
ha-Qodesh ("The Sacred Language") as the scriptures written in this language were considered sacred. After the first Destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 BC, most scholars agree that the kind of Hebrew prevalent in the Hebrew Bible was replaced
in daily use by Mishnaic Hebrew and a local version of Aramaic. After the depletion of the Jewish population of parts of Roman occupied Palestine, it is believed
that Hebrew gradually ceased to be a spoken language roughly around 200CE, but has stayed as the major written language
throughout the centuries. Not only religious, but texts for a large variety of purposes: letters and contracts, science,
philosophy, medicine, poetry, protocols of courts—all resorted to Hebrew, which thus adapted itself to various new fields
and terminologies by borrowings and new inventions.
Hebrew was revitalized as a spoken language during the late 19th and early 20th century as Modern Hebrew, replacing a host of
languages spoken by the Jews at that time, such as Arabic, Judezmo (also called Ladino), Yiddish, Russian, and other languages of the
Jewish diaspora as the spoken language of the majority of the
Jewish people living in Israel.
Modern Hebrew became an official language in British Palestine in 1921, and the primary official language of the state of Israel, (Arabic maintained its official language status). The Hebrew name for the
language is עברית, or Ibrit (pronounced "eev-REET", IPA:
[iv.'ɹit]).
History
While the term "Hebrew" as a nationality is customarily used to refer to the ancient Israelites, it has been postulated that the classical Hebrew language was essentially identical to the language
spoken by their neighbors, the Phoenicians and Canaanites.
Hebrew strongly resembles Aramaic and to a lesser extent
South-Central Arabic, sharing many linguistic features with them.
Early history
Hebrew is an Afro-Asiatic language. It is theorized that this language family probably originated in Mesopotamia, and began to diverge around the 8th millennium BC, although there is much debate about the actual date. (The theory is espoused by most
archeologists and linguists, but at odds with traditional reading of the Torah.) Speakers of Proto-Afro-Asiatic spread northeast,
eventually reaching the Middle East.
At the end of the 3rd millennium BC the ancestral languages of
Aramaic, Ugaritic, and other various
Canaanite languages were spoken in the Levant alongside the influential dialects of Ebla and Akkad. As the Hebrew founders from northern Haran filtered south into
and came under the influence of the Levant, like many sojourners into Canaan including the Philistines, they adopted Canaanite dialects. The first written evidence of distinctive Hebrew, the Gezer calendar, dates back to the
10th century BC, the traditional time of the reign of David and Solomon. It presents a list of seasons and
related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar (named after the city in whose proximity it was found) is written in an old
Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the
Greeks and Etruscans later became the Roman script used today in almost all European languages. The Gezer
calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where more modern
spelling requires it (see below).
Numerous older tablets have been found in the region with similar scripts written in other Semitic languages, for example
Protosinaitic. It is believed
that the original shapes of the script go back to the hieroglyphs of the Egyptian writing, though the phonetic values are instead
inspired by the acrophonic principle. The common ancestor of Hebrew and
Phoenician is called Canaanite, and was the first to use a Semitic alphabet
distinct from Egyptian. One ancient Canaanite document is the famous Moabite
Stone; the Siloam Inscription, found near Jerusalem, is an early example of Hebrew. Less ancient samples of Old Hebrew include the
ostraka found near Lachish which describe events preceding the final capture of
Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the
Babylonian captivity of 586 BC.
The most famous work originally written in Hebrew is the Hebrew Bible, though the time at which it was written is a matter of
dispute. See dating the Bible for details. The earliest extant
copies were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, written between the
2nd century BC and the 1st century AD.
The formal language of the Babylonian Empire was Aramaic (its name is either
derived from "Aram Naharayim", Mesopotamia, or from "Aram," Canaanite for "highland," the ancient name for Syria). The Persian Empire, which had captured Babylonia a few decades later under Cyrus,
adopted Aramaic as the official language. Aramaic is also a North-West Semitic
language, quite similar to Hebrew. Aramaic has contributed many words and expressions to Hebrew, mainly as the language of
commentary in the Talmud and other religious works.
In addition to numerous words and expressions, Hebrew also borrowed the Aramaic writing system. Although the original Aramaic letter forms were derived from the same Phoenician
alphabet that was used in ancient Israel, they had changed significantly, both in the hands of the Mesopotamians and of the Jews,
assuming the forms familiar to us today around the first century AD. Writings
of that era (most notably, some of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in
Qumran) are written in a script very similar to the "square" one still used today.
Later history
The Jews living in the Persian Empire adopted Aramaic, and Hebrew quickly fell into disuse. It was preserved, however, as the
literary language of the Bible. Aramaic became the vernacular language of the renewed Judaea for the following 700 years. Famous
works written in Aramaic include the Targum, the Talmud and several of Flavius Josephus' books (several
of the latter were not preserved, however, in the original.). Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in AD 70, the
Jews gradually began to disperse from Judaea into foreign countries (this dispersion was hastened when the Romans destroyed
Jerusalem (and turned it into a pagan city named Aelia Capitolina) in 135 AD/CE after putting down the Bar-Kochba Revolt). For many hundreds of years
Aramaic remained the spoken language of Mesopotamian Jews, and Lishana
Deni, known also as Judeo-Aramaic, is a modern descendant that is still spoken by a few thousand Jews (and many
non-Jews) from the area known as Kurdistan; however, it gradually gave way to
Arabic, as it had given way to other local languages in the countries to which the Jews had gone.
Hebrew was not used as a spoken language for roughly 2300 years. However the Jews have always devoted much effort to
maintaining high standards of literacy among themselves, the main purpose being to let any Jew read the Hebrew Bible and the accompanying religious works in the original (see rabbinic literature, Codes of Jewish
law, The Jewish Bookshelf). It is interesting to
note that the languages that the Jews adopted from their adopted nations, namely Ladino and Yiddish were not directly connected
to Hebrew (the former being based on Spanish and Arabic borrowings, latter being a remote dialect of Middle High German), however, both were written from right to left
using the Hebrew script. Hebrew was also used as a language of communication among Jews from different countries, particularly
for the purpose of international trade.
The most important contribution to preserving traditional Hebrew pronunciation in this period was that of scholars called
Masoretes (from Masoret 'tradition'), who from about the seventh to the tenth centuries AD devised detailed
markings to indicate vowels, stress, and cantillation (recitation methods).
The original Hebrew texts used only consonants, and later some consonants were used to indicate long vowels. By the time of the
Masoretes this text was too sacred to be altered, so all their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the
letters.
Revival
The revival of Hebrew as a mother tongue was initiated by the efforts
of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922) (אליעזר
בן־יהודה). Ben-Yehuda, previously an ardent revolutionary in Tsarist Russia, had joined the Jewish national movement and emigrated to
Palestine in 1881 (which was later to
become Israel). Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the
diaspora lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop tools for
vernacularizing the literary language for everyday communication. However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been
replaced in Eastern Europe by more modern grammar and style, in the writings of people like Ahad Ha-Amm and others. His
organizational efforts and involvement with the establishment of schools and the writing of textbooks pushed the
vernacularization activity into a gradually accepted movement. It was not, however, until the 1904-1905 "Second Immigration
Movement" that Hebrew had caught real momentum in Ottoman Palestine with the new and better organized enterprises set forth by
the new group of immigrants. When the British government of Palestine recognized Hebrew as one of the country's three official
languages (English, Arabic, and Hebrew, in 1922), its new formal status contributed to its diffusion.
While many saw his work as fanciful or even blasphemous (http://www.jewishmag.com/43mag/ben-yehuda/ben-yehuda.htm), many soon understood the need for
a common language amongst Jews of pre-state Israel who at the turn of the previous century were arriving in large numbers from
diverse countries with many different languages. A Committee of the Hebrew Language was established. Later it became the Academy of the Hebrew Language, an organization
that exists today. The results of his work and the Committee's were published in a dictionary (The Complete Dictionary of
Ancient and Modern Hebrew). Ben-Yehuda's work fell on fertile ground, and by the beginning of the 20th century, Hebrew was well on its way to becoming the main language of the
Jewish population of both Ottoman and British pre-State Israel.
Modern Hebrew
Ben-Yehuda based Modern Hebrew on Biblical Hebrew. Often new words were coined by applying unused word-patterns to existing roots
(Biblical k-t-v, "write," gave rise to modern Hebrew hikhtiv, "dictated," and hitkhatev, "corresponded.") When this did not
suffice, the Committee set out to invent a new word for a certain concept, it searched through the Biblical word-indexes and
foreign dictionaries, particularly Arabic. While Ben-Yehuda preferred Semitic roots to European ones, the abundance of European
Hebrew speakers led to the introduction of numerous foreign words. Other changes which had taken place as Hebrew came back to
life were the systematization of the grammar - the Biblical syntax was sometimes limited and ambiguous -- and the adoption of
standard Western punctuation.
Modern Hebrew shows influences from Russian (for example, the
Russian suffix -acia is used in nouns where English has the suffix
-ation); German (particularly in combination words like "tapuakh-adama," meaning potato (German Erdapfel) or "dme-shtia,"
meaning tip (German Trinkgeld). English has been a very
strong influence, both from British influence during the period of the Mandate and American influence in the present day.
Finally, Arabic, being the language of numerous Mizrahic and Sephardic Jewish immigrants from Arab countries as
well as of the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, has also had an important influence on Hebrew, especially in slang ((for example, "sababa",
meaning "excellent", or "y'alla", meaning "come on.")
Modern Hebrew is printed with a script known as "square". It is the same script, ultimately derived from Aramaic, that was
used for copying of Bible books in Hebrew for two thousand years. This script also has a cursive version, which is used for
handwriting.
Hebrew has been the language of numerous poets, which include Rachel, Hayim Nahman Bialik, Shaul Tchernihovsky,
Lea Goldberg, Avraham Shlonsky and Natan Alterman. Hebrew was also the language of hundreds of authors, one of whom is the Nobel Prize laureate Shmuel Yosef Agnon.
Dialects
According to Ethnologue, dialects of Hebrew include Standard Hebrew (General Israeli, Europeanized Hebrew), Oriental Hebrew
(Arabized Hebrew, Yemenite Hebrew).
In practice, there is also Ashkenazi Hebrew, still widely used in Ashkenazi
Jewish services and studies in Israel and abroad. It was influenced by the Yiddish language.
Sephardi Hebrew is the basis of Standard Hebrew and not all that different from
it, but traditionally it had a slightly bigger variety of pronunciation. It was influenced by the Ladino language.
Mizrahi (Oriental) Hebrew is actually a collection of dialects spoken liturgically
by Jews in various parts of the Arab and Islamic
world. It was influenced by the Arabic language.
Nearly every immigrant to Israel is encouraged to adopt Standard Hebrew and its nuances as their daily language. As a
dialect, Standard Hebrew was originally based on Sephardi Hebrew, but has been further constrained to Ashkenazi phonology
to form a unique modern dialect. For example, the "r" sound of Standard Hebrew resembles the guttural sound of German, Yiddish,
and French, rather than the trilled consonant common in Semitic languages.
Languages strongly influenced by Hebrew
Yiddish, Ladino, Karaim, and Judeo-Arabic were all
highly influenced by Hebrew. None are completely derived from Hebrew, but all are full of Hebrew loanwords. See [1] (http://www.jewish-languages.org/) for
similar cases.
Sounds
Vowels
The Hebrew word for vowels is tnu'ot. The modern Israeli Hebrew language has 5
vowels:
- /a/ (As in "car")
- /e/ (As in "set")
- /i/ (As in "beak")
- /o/ (As in "horn")
- /u/ (As in "soup")
Each vowel has three forms: short, long and interrupted (hataf). There is no audible distinction between the three in
modern Israeli Hebrew, and the type of a vowel is determined entirely by its position inside a word.
Hebrew phonetics include a special feature called schwa. There are two kinds of schwa:
resting (nax) and moving (na' ). The resting schwa is pronounced as a brief stop of speech. The moving schwa sounds
much like the English schwa.
Hebrew also has dagesh, a strengthening. There are two kinds of
strengthenings: light (qal, known also as dagesh lene) and heavy (xazaq or dagesh fortis). There are
two sub-categories of the heavy dagesh: structural heavy (xazaq tavniti) and complementing heavy (xazaq mashlim).
The light affects the phonemes /v/ /g/ /d/ /kh/ /f/ /t/ in the beginning of a word, or after a resting schwa. Structural heavy
emphases belong to certain vowel patterns (mishkalim and binyanim; see the section on grammar below). Complementing
strengthening is added when vowel
assimilation takes place. As mentioned before, the emphasis influences which of a pair of allophones is pronounced. Interestingly enough, historical evidence indicates that /g/, /d/ and /t/ used to have
strengthened versions of their own, however they had disappeared from virtually all the spoken dialects of Hebrew. All other
consonants except aspirates may receive an emphasis, but their sound will not
change.
Hebrew has two kinds of stress (taa'm): on the last syllable
(milra' ) and on the penultimate syllable (the one preceding the last, mile'l). The former is more frequent.
Specific rules connect the location of the stress with the length of the vowels in the last syllable; however due to the fact
that Modern Hebrew does not distinguish between long and short vowels, these rules are often ignored in everyday speech.
Interestingly enough, the rules that specify the vowel length are different
for verbs and nouns, which influences the stress; thus the mile'l-stressed ókhel (="food") and milra'
-stressed okhèl (="eats", masculine) are written in the same way. Little ambiguity exists, however, due to nouns and verbs
having incompatible roles in normal sentences. This is, however, also true in English, in, for example, the English word
"conduct," in its nominal and verbal forms.
One-letter words are always attached to the following word. Such words include: the definite article h (="the"); prepositions
b (="in"), m (="from"), l (="to"); conjunctions sh (="that"), k (="as", "like"), v (="and"). The vowel that
follows the letter thus attached depends in general on the beginning of the next word and the presence of a definite article
which may be swallowed by the one-letter word.
The rules for the prepositions are complicated and variety with the formality of speech. In most cases they are followed by a
moving schwa, and for that reason they are pronounced as be, me and le. In more formal speech, if a
preposition is put before a word which begins with a moving schwa, then the preposition takes the vowel /i/ (and the initial
consonant is weakened), but in colloquial speech these changes do not occur. For example, colloquial be-kfar" (="in a
village") becomes bi-khfar. If l or b are followed by the definite article ha, their vowel changes to
/a/. Thus *be-ha-matos becomes ba-matos (="in the plane"). However it does not happen to m, therefore
me-ha-matos is a valid form, which means "from the plane".
- * indicates that the given example is not grammatically correct
Consonants
The Hebrew word for consonants is i'curim.
/a'/ was once pronounced as a voiceless
pharyngeal fricative. Modern Ashkenazi (European, except Dutch) reading
tradition ignores this; however Sephardic (North-African) Jews and Israeli Arabs
accent these phonemes, in a fashion which resembles Arabic `ain
ع. Georgian Jews pronounce it as a glottalized g. Western European Sephardim and Dutch Ashkenazim traditionally pronounce it as "ng"
in "sing" — a pronunciation which can also be found in the Italki tradition and,
historically, in south-west Germany.
Note 1: Postalveolar sounds (with the exception of
/ʃ/) are not native to Hebrew, and only found in borrowings.
Note 2: The pairs (/b/, /v/), (/k/,
/kʰ/), (/p/, /f/), written respectively by the letters bet (ב), kaf (כ) and pe (פ) have
historically been allophonic. All three are still mutually exclusive (in words derived from Hebrew roots), however due to /w/
merging with /v/, /x/ merging with
/kʰ/, and the introduction of initial /f/ through foreign borrowings, none remained strictly allophonic.
Notes on writing
- The phoneme /v/ is represented by two letters: vet (ב, unemphasized bet) and vav (ו). Although Modern Hebrew
pronunciation does not differentiate between the two, the latter is historically weaker due to its being a semi-vowel (/w/).
- The phoneme /k/ is represented by two letters: kaf (כ) and quf (ק). Although Modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation
does not require a differentiation between the two, the latter is pronounced like an Arabic /q/, a pronunciation that is becoming more frequent in
Israeli pronunciation, although it remains undifferentiated in the Hebrew of most non-Israeli speakers, especially among
Ashkenazim.
- The phoneme /t/ is represented by two letters: tet (ט) and tau (ת, compare to the Greek theta θ and tau
τ). As mentioned earlier, the former was once pronounced with emphasis. However, it seems that the letter tau (without
dagesh) once represented a fricative
phoneme
/θ/. For example, what in Modern Hebrew sounds as "Beit Lexem" was transcribed (through Greek) into English from Old
Hebrew as "Bethleem", also demonstrating note nr. 5. The traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation of tau without dagesh as "s" is
believed to be a result of this.
- Similarly to Modern Arabic, Old Hebrew had the phonemes
/ʦ/ and /t/ (written by the letter tet) emphasized. Currently, there is no community of Hebrew-speakers which
expresses this in speech; however the emphasis led to several types of phonetic change that still exist. The exact nature of the
emphatic feature is a matter of debate; the most commonly suggested possibilities are pharyngealization (as in Arabic) and
glottalization (as in Ethiopic).
- The phoneme /x/ is represented by two letters: xet (ח) and khaf (כ, unemphasized kaf). Although Modern Hebrew
speakers seldom differentiate between the two, apart from a few Sephardic
speakers, the former was historically a voiceless pharyngeal fricative (like Arabic ح).
Historical sound changes
Greek transcriptions provide evidence that Biblical Hebrew maintained the proto-Semitic consonants gh, kh for longer than the
writing system might suggest. Thus `Amorah is transcribed as Gomorrha in Greek, whereas `Eber is transcribed as Eber with no
intrusive g; since comparative Semitic evidence shows that proto-Semitic *gh and *` both became `ayin in later Hebrew, this
suggests that the distinction was still maintained in Classical times.
Grammar
Hebrew grammar is mostly analytical, expressing such
forms as dative, ablative, and accusative using prepositional particles rather than grammatical cases. However inflection does play an important role in the formation of the verbs, nouns and
the genitive construct, which is called "smikhut". Words in smikhut are
often combined with hyphens.
Hebrew has only the definite article, "ha-". It is a contraction of an earlier form, probably *hal, the assimilation of the
/l/ being evident in the emphasis that normally follows the article. In smikhut, only the main noun (that is the noun to which
the other nouns connect) can receive the article.
The two main parts of the Hebrew sentence ("mishpat") are the subject ("nose") and the predicate ("nasu"). They are adjusted to each other in gender and person. Thus,
in a sentence "ani okhel", "I eat"/"I am eating", "ani", "I", is the subject, and "okhel", "eating" (singular masculine present
of the root A-K-L in Pa`al) is the verb (Hebrew does not have a system of auxiliary verbs). The subject always receives the
definite article, unless it is a pronoun or a name.
Other parts of the Hebrew sentence are the direct object ("musa"), and complements to any noun ("levai"). Unlike English,
complements follow the noun, rather than precede it, and also like the verb they follow the subject's gender, person and article.
Thus, "Ha-chatul ha-qatan akhal et ha-gvinah", "The small cat ate the cheese", the subject is "ha-chatul", "the cat", the
complement is "ha-qatan", "the small", the predicate is "akhal", "ate" (3rd person masculine past of the root A-K-L in Pa`al),
and "ha-gvinah", "the cheese" is the object. Note that both the words for "cat" and for "small" received the definite
article.
The Hebrew grammar distinguishes between various kinds of indirect objects, according to what they specify. Thus, there is a
division between objects for time ("tiur zman"), objects for place ("tiur makom"), objects for reason ("tiur sibah") and many
others. Additionally, Hebrew distinguishes between various kinds of verbless fragments, also according to their use, such as
"tmurah" for elaboration, "qriah" for exclamation, "pniyah" for approach and "hesger" for disclosing the opinion of a certain
party using direct speech (e.g. "le-da'at ha-rofe, ha-i'shun mazik la-briut", "[according to] the opinion of the doctor, smoking
is harmful to health").
A sentence may lack a subject. In this case it is called "stami", or "causual". If several parts of the sentence have the same
function and are attached to the same word, they are called "kolel", "collective". Two or more sentences who do not share common
parts and are separated by comma are called "mishpat mehubar", or "added". In many cases, the second sentence uses a pronoun that
stands for the other's subject; they are generally interconnected.
A sentence in which one or more of the parts are replaced by a clause ("psukit") is called a compound sentence, or "mishpat
murkav". Compound sentences use the preposition "she-", "that". For example, in the sentence "Yosi omer she-hu okhel", "Yosi says
that he is eating", "Yosi omer" ("Yosi says") is the main sentence, followed by a direct subject clause "hu okhel" ("He is
eating").
Verbs
The Hebrew word for "verb" is po'al.
The Hebrew Language verbs are inflected by gender, person,
number, mood, and tense. The base form for verbs is the 3rd person masculine singular past active indicative.
Person, number, and gender
There are three persons in the Hebrew language: the 1st
person, also called "speaking"; the 2nd person, also called "present" (as in presence); and the 3rd person, also called "hidden"
(in the present tense, all persons have identical forms, differing only by number and gender). For each person, there are both
singular and plural forms. The archaic dual number present in the noun system (e.g. yom (="day"), yomayim (="two
days"), yamim (="days") is not used in the verb system.
Usually the person affects the suffix of the verb. Thus lamadti means "I learned", lamadta means "You (masculine
singular) learned", lamdu means "they learned". The stem lamd- remains constant.
The inflection by gender is full; that is, Hebrew distinguishes between lamadet (="you learned", feminine) and
lamadta (="you learned", masculine).
Tense
There are three tenses in the indicative mood: hoveh
(="present"), avar (="past") and a'tid (="future"). There is no perfect tense, but the perfect aspect can be derived from the context. To emphasize the imperfect/progressive
aspect of an action, the auxiliary verb "to be" may be used, as in the English progressive tenses. However, unlike English, this form is only used for emphasis and distinction, and is
not required to express an imperfect sense.
Mood and voice
Additionally, there are several imperative forms called /tsivuj/, used with the 2nd. Generally the imperative is the
same as the future tense (e.g. tiftax (masc.), tiftekhi (fem.), tiftekhu (plur.) "open!") There is a classical imperative form
that is still used in more formal speech (e.g. ptakh!/pitkhi!/pitkhu!).
More colloquially, the future tense without the first syllable may be used, but this is technically not grammatical (e.g.
ftax/ftekhi/ftekhu).
Another feature, is the polite-demand-mood postfix -/na/, which is optionally juxtaposed to any imperative or future,
in 2nd or 3rd person, rendering the verb into a polite-imperative mood. eg. /javi-na/ (="let him bring"), or
/ftax-na/ (="please open")
Passive binyans (see below) have neither an imperative nor
an infinitive form.
Verb classes
As in other Semitic languages, verbs (like nouns) are derived from a three-letter root (which signifies a certain general
concept, such as K-T-V for writing) into numerous patterns through the use of intermediate vowels and prefixes. Hebrew
grammarians usually classify the verb system into 7 basic groups (called the binyanim, plural of binyan), each of
which conjugates in a certain way, which is usually
apparent in the binyan 's name. Thus, the Nif'al binyan specifies the presence of the syllable "ni" in the
beginning of the verb (either directly or as a residual emphasis on a different beginning). The Pa'al binyan is sometimes
called Qal—perhaps because without diacritics (little dots that
serve as vowels in written Hebrew) it could be confused with Pi'el.
In modern Hebrew, there are 3 active binyans (Pa'al, Pi'el, Hif'il), 3 passive ones (Nif'al,
Pu'al, Huf'al) and 1 relexive binyan (Hitpa'el). Usually Pi'el verbs---e.g. tipel (="handled,
took care of")—become passive in Pu'al—tupal, (="was handled, was taken care of"). Similarly, the
active Hif'il corresponds to the passive Huf'al. Nif'al is often used as the passive of
Pa'al—thus the Pa'al form sagar (="closed"), turns into the Nif'al form nisgar (="was
closed"); however, ancient usage suggests that it was originally used as a reflexive structure, and modern Hebrew has many verbs
in Nif'al that have an active sense, e.g. nixnas (="entered"). In modern Hebrew, hitpa'el carries the
reflexive function. Passive forms (whether in 'Pu'al', 'Huf'al' or 'Nif'al) are rarely used in Modern Hebrew, sentences with no
overt subject or with a third-person subject preferred instead.
In Modern Hebrew, 'Pi'el' is by far the most productive of the binyans, used almost exclusively for the introduction of new
verbs. 'Pa'al' and 'Nif'al' are hardly ever used for coining new verbs. The selection of 'Hif'il' for new verbs is largely
phonologically based (for verbs derived from monosyllabic nouns with word initial clusters).
The system of the binyan is relatively easy to understand and grasp; however it has numerous exceptions due to regular
phonological effects like assimilation.
Participles and gerunds
English gerunds such as "my winning the prize was a surprise" are expressed by noun
forms equivalent to the infinitive of the verb.
Participles may be formed from all verbs (using the indicative form) and
used as nouns or adjectives. e.g. the Hebrew for "guard" (the profession) is the present participle "(he) guards" ("shomer").
Participles may also be used to describe state, and would then usually be accompanied by words such as "while" or "as", e.g. "as
he is painting, time goes by". Prefixes may be used with participles to describe time, e.g. mishekamti (="once I stood
up"); lixshetakum (="when you get up",future, masculine).
The noun
The Hebrew word for "noun" is shem etsem
Hebrew nouns are inflected by gender, number (and sometimes by possession) but not by case. Nouns are generally correlated to verbs (by shared roots), but their forming is not as systematic,
often due to loanwords from foreign languages.
Gender
Hebrew distinguishes between masculine nouns—such as yeled (="boy, child")—and feminine nouns—such as
yaldah (="girl"). There is no neuter gender. Generally, almost all nouns that end in "ah" are feminine. Sometimes, as in
the example, a feminine form can be formed through adding a final "ah" to a masculine noun (written as the letter "he").
Number
Generally, Hebrew distinguishes between singular and plural forms of a noun. Masculine plural forms usually end with the
suffix "-im"; feminine singular "-ah" turns into "-ot". Thus we get the forms yeladim (="boys, children"), and "yeladot"
(="girls"). Hebrew also has a dual number, but its modern use is restricted to particular nouns, such as shavua (="week"),
which becomes shvu'ayim (="two weeks"). Body parts and things that come in pairs have duals, for example
mishqafayim (="eyeglasses") and raglayim (="feet"). However for most nouns the dual form is discarded in favor of
the plural. Thus, dirah (="apartment"), becomes shtei dirot (="two apartments"), rather than *diratayim.
Possession
Possession may be indicated by a possessive pronoun—sheli (="my,
mine")—but ancient Hebrew used inflection, and such inflection is still in use in literary Hebrew, as well as in particular
idioms in modern spoken Hebrew. The noun receives a suffix signifying the person to whom an object belongs. Thus, dirah
(="apartment"), may change into dirati (="my apartment"), diratxa (="your apartment"), diratam (="their
apartment"), etc.
Forming words
There are basically two ways of forming Hebrew nouns. The first way is similar to the system of the verb. A root is adopted
into a pattern of vowels, prefixes and suffixes (called, in this case, the "meter", or "mishkal"). The root A-D-M, related to
"red", "man" (Adam), and "earth", is adopted into the meter qatelet (which is a typical meter for words denoting
diseases), to create ademet (="measles", derived from the meaning "red").
Qatelet is a form of pronouncing meters, with the 'q', 't', and 'l' standing for the actual three letters of the root.
The second way is the addition of two existing stems. For example, qol (="sound") and no'a (="motion") create
together qolno'a, (="cinema").
Writing system
Modern Hebrew is written from right to left using the Hebrew
alphabet. Modern scripts are based on the "square" letter form, in which most of the letters are made by adding lines to the
letter resh (ר). In handwriting, a similar concept is used, however where printed letters have right angles, scripts have
arcs. All Hebrew consonant phonemes are represented by a single letter. Although a single letter might represent two phonemes
(thus the letter "bet" represents both /b/ and /v/), they always differ only in vocality (whether they are voiced or unvoiced),
and so can be considered a single consonant. In addition, the voiced form normally has a dot in the center, known as a
dagesh, though this convention is not always followed, especially in older
texts.
Vowels are optional and written as dots and dashes under the text. Different combinations of dots and dashes signify different
types of vowels. A convenient rule to remember is that long vowels have an even number of dots and dashes. The semi-vowels hei,
vav and yud can represent both a consonant (/h/, /v/ and /y/, respectively) or a vowel, which presence is ambiguous. In the
latter case, these letters are called "emot qria" ("matres
lectionis" in Latin, "mothers of reading" in English). With a vowel, the letter alef is mute. When a vowel is absent, alef
stands for /a/. The letter hei in the end of a word also sounds like /a/ and signifies the feminine gender. The letter waw
standing after the vowels /u/ and /o/ lengthens them, and so does the letter yud after the vowel /i/.
Emphases are written as a dot inside the letter. There is no written differentiation between different types of emphases and
schwas.
Romanization
see: Romanization of Hebrew
The Hebrew language is normally written in the Hebrew alphabet.
Due to publishing difficulties, and the unfamiliarity of many readers with the alphabet, there are many ways of transcribing
Hebrew into Roman letters. The most accurate method is the International Phonetic Alphabet. It is used
(in a simplified ASCII form) in the section concerned with Phonology, to describe the sounds of the Hebrew language.
However, the IPA is not well known,
and is often considered cumbersome for transcribing pronunciations for a general audience. Therefore this article uses a
different system to express Hebrew pronunciation, and at least some orthographic peculiarities. The system comes down to the
following:
- The letter tsadeh (צ) is transcribed by "c" so that it could be distinguished from other combinations of /t/ and /s/
although "ts" or "tz" is usually acceptable.
- The letter a'in (ע) with various vowels is transcribed as a', e', i', o' and u'.
- The letter shin (ש) is transcribed by "sh".
- Both the letter tav (ת) and the letter tet (ט) are transcribed by "t".
- The letter he (ה) at the end of a word, which stands for feminine gender, is transcribed by "ah" (it is read /a/)
- The letter quf (ק) is transcribed by "q" (it is read /k/).
- Single-letter prepositions and the definite article are separated with a dash (-) from their subject.
- Stresses and schwas are not marked since the stresses are not pronounced, and the schwa's locations are apparent.
- The vowels are always written.
- The letter yod is usually transcribed by "y".
Examples
Common phrases in Hebrew
External links
- Ethnologue report for Hebrew (http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=HBR)
- Academy of Hebrew Language (http://hebrew-academy.huji.ac.il/english.html), the Institute which prescribes standards for
modern Hebrew grammar, orthography, transliteration, and punctuation based upon the study of Hebrew's historical
development.
- History of the Hebrew Language
- Dictionaries
- Root-based (http://www.hebrewatmilah.org/maskilon1/index.htm) (Maskilon)
- Word-search (http://milon.morfix.co.il/) English-Hebrew and Hebrew-English (Morfix)
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