Learning to speak Modern Hebrew

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About the Modern Hebrew Language

Hebrew o)) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over two thousand years. It is one of the official languages of Israel, along with Arabic. Ancient Hebrew is also the liturgical tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Palestinian Arabic is their vernacular, though today about 700 Samaritans remain. As a foreign language it is studied mostly by Jews and students of Judaism and Israel, archaeologists and linguists specializing in the Middle East and its civilizations, by theologians, and in Christian seminaries.

The core of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) is written in Classical Hebrew, and much of its present form is specifically the dialect of Biblical Hebrew that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BC, around the time of the Babylonian exile. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon HaKodesh , "The Holy Tongue", since ancient times.

The revival of the Hebrew language was a process that took place in Europe and Israel at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century, through which the Hebrew language changed from a liturgical, written language to a spoken language of official status in the State of Israel. Not purely a linguistic process, the revival of Hebrew was part of an ideology associated with Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The process of Hebrew's return to regular usage is unique; there are no other examples of a language devoid of native speakers becoming a national language with millions of first language speakers.

The revival also brought with it linguistic changes to the language. Despite that the leaders of the process insisted they were only continuing "from the place where [Hebrew's] vitality was ended," they in fact created a new situation for the language, the characteristics of which are derived from all periods of the Hebrew language and also from European languages, chief among them Yiddish. Modern Hebrew is spoken throughout Israel today.

For 1,300 years, from the conquest of the land of Israel until the Bar Kokhba war, Jews spoke Hebrew or, from the end of the Bar Kokhba war until the Middle Ages, Aramaic. For the next sixteen centuries, until the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, Hebrew was employed as a literary and official language and the language of prayer.Ever since the spoken usage of Mishnaic Hebrew language ended in the second century CE, Hebrew had not been spoken as a mother tongue. Even so, during the Middle Ages, the language was used by Jews in a wide variety of disciplines. This usage kept alive a substantial portion of the traits characteristic of Hebrew.

* First and foremost, Classical Hebrew was preserved in full through well-recognized sources, chiefly the Tanakh (especially those portions used liturgically like the Torah, Haftarot, Megilot, and the Book of Psalms) and the Mishnah. Apart from these, Hebrew was known through hymns, prayers, midrashim, and the like.
* During the Middle Ages, Hebrew was used as a written language in Rabbinical literature, including in judgments of Halakhah, Responsa, and books of meditation. In most cases, certainly in the base of Hebrew's revival, 18th and 19th century Europe, the use of Hebrew was not at all natural, but heavy in flowery language and quotations, non-grammatical forms, and mixing-in of other languages, especially Aramaic.
* The use of Hebrew was not only in written language. Hebrew was also used as an articulated language, in synagogues and in batei midrash. Thus, Hebrew phonology and the pronunciation of vowels and consonants were preserved. Despite this, in the region the influence of foreign tongues caused many changes, leading to the development of three different forms of pronunciation:
o Ashkenazi Hebrew, used by Eastern and Western European Jews, which maintained mostly the structure of vowels but may have lost the stress, and the gemination, although this cannot be known for sure, as there are no recordings of how the language (or its respective dialects) sounded e.g. in Kana'an; Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation has a variation of vowels and consonants, which follows closely the variation of the vowel and consonant signs written down by the masoretes around the 7th century CE, indicating that there is a strong link with the language heard by them. E.g. where we see two different vowel signs, or a consonant with resp. without a dogeish (dagesh), a difference is also heard in the various Ashkenazic pronunciations.
o Sephardi Hebrew, used by Mizrahi Jews, preserved a structure different from the recognized Tiberian Hebrew niqqud of only five vowels, but did preserve the consonants, the grammatical stress, the dagesh, and the schwa; yet, different ways of writing consonants are not always heard in all Sephardic pronunciations. E.g. the Dutch Sephardic pronunciation does not make a difference between the beth with and without dagesh: both are pronounced as "b". The "taf" is always pronounced as "t", with or without dagesh. There are two possibilities: the difference disappeared over time in the Sephardic pronunciations, or it never was there in the first place: the pronunciation stems from a separate Hebrew dialect, which always was there, and which e.g. the masoretes did not use as reference.
o Yemenite Hebrew, which, thought by some to preserve almost all the Classical Hebrew pronunciation, was barely known where the revival took place.
o Within each of these groups, there also existed different subsets of pronunciation. For example, differences existed between the Hebrew used by Polish Jewry and that of Lithuanian Jewry and of German Jewry.
* According to evidence discovered by researchers, it appears that in the fifty years preceding the start of the revival process, a version of spoken Hebrew already existed in the markets of Jerusalem. The Sephardic Jews who spoke Ladino or Arabic and the Ashkenazi Jews who spoke Yiddish needed a common language for commercial purposes. The most obvious choice was Hebrew. Though Hebrew was spoken in this case, it must be noted that it was not a native mother tongue, but more of a pidgin.
* The linguistic situation against which the background the revival process occurred was one of diglossia, when two languages—one of prestige and class and another of the masses—exist within one culture. In Europe, this phenomenon has waned, starting with English in the 16th century, but there were still differences between spoken street language and written language. For example, Russians spoke popular Russian to each other, but wrote in a more literary style of Russian or French, while Germans spoke in local dialects and wrote in Standard German. The Jews had a similar situation: Yiddish was the spoken language, and the written language was Hebrew for liturgical purposes and the language of the broader culture - be it Russian, German, French, Polish or Czech - for secular purposes.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922), is highly regarded as the "reviver of the Hebrew language" yet his major contributions were ideological and symbolic; he was the first to raise the concept of reviving Hebrew, to publish articles in newspapers on the topic, and he took part in the project known as the Ben Yehuda Dictionary. He worked tirelessly to raise awareness about the topic while fighting against its opponents. However, the practical activity which finally brought about the revitalization of Hebrew was not carried out, at least for the most part, by Ben Yehuda in Jerusalem but occurred in the Settlements of the First Aliyah and the Second Aliyah. In these Settlements, the first Hebrew schools were established, Hebrew became a spoken language of daily affairs, and finally became a systematic and national language. Yet Ben Yehuda's fame and notoriety stems from his initiation and symbolic leadership of the Hebrew revival.

The revival of spoken Hebrew can be separated into three stages, which are concurrent with (1) the First Aliyah, (2) the Second Aliyah, and (3) the British Mandate Period. In the first period, the activity centered on Hebrew schools in the Settlements and in Ben Yehuda's club; in the second period, Hebrew usage expanded into assembly meetings and public activities; and in the third period, it became the language used by the Yishuv, the Jewish population during the Mandate Period, for general purposes. At this stage, Hebrew possessed both spoken and written forms, and its importance was reflected in the official status of Hebrew during the British Mandate. All of the stages were characterized by the establishment of many organizations that took an active and ideological part in Hebrew activities. This resulted in the establishment of Hebrew high schools (גימנסיות), the Hebrew University, the Jewish Legion, the Histadrut labor organization, and in Tel Aviv - the first Hebrew city.

Throughout all periods, Hebrew signified for both its proponents and detractors the antithesis of Yiddish. Against the exilic, rabbinical, and bourgeois Yiddish language stood revived Hebrew, a language of secularism, Zionism, of grassroots pioneers, and above all of the transformation of the Jewish nation to a Hebrew nation with its own land. Yiddish was degradingly referred to as a jargon, and its speakers encountered harsh opposition.

Nonetheless, Ghil'ad Zuckermann believes that "Yiddish is a primary contributor to Israeli Hebrew because it was the mother tongue of the vast majority of language revivalists and first pioneers in Eretz Yisrael at the crucial period of the beginning of Israeli Hebrew". According to Zuckermann, although the revivalists wished to speak Hebrew with Semitic grammar and pronunciation, they could not avoid the Ashkenazi mindset arising from their European background. He argues that their attempt to deny their European roots, negate diasporism and avoid hybridity (as reflected in Yiddish) failed. "Had the language revivalists been Arabic-speaking Jews (e.g. from Morocco), Israeli Hebrew would have been a totally different language – both genetically and typologically, much more Semitic. The impact of the founder population on Israeli Hebrew is incomparable with that of later immigrants." Zuckermann says that a hybrid is a sign of richness and vigour rather than impurity or contamination. Zuckermann's view of Hebrew's heavy European hybridization, however, is not accepted by the majority of modern linguists, who see Modern Hebrew as a legitimate continuation of its earlier forms.

The vast majority of scholars see Modern Hebrew as a direct continuation of Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew, though they concede that it has acquired some European vocabulary and syntactical features, in much the same way as Modern Standard Arabic. There are two minor dissenting views, which have not been accepted by most scholars, and are in fact subject to much criticism. They are:

* Paul Wexler claims that modern Hebrew is not a Semitic language at all, but a dialect of "Judaeo-Sorbian". He argues that the underlying structure of the language is Slavic, but "re-lexified" to absorb much of the vocabulary and inflexional system of Hebrew in much the same way as a creole. This view forms part of a larger complex of theories, such as that Ashkenazi Jews are predominantly descended from Slavic and Turkic tribes rather than from the ancient Israelites, none of which are accepted by mainstream scholarship.
* Ghil'ad Zuckermann compromises between Wexler and the majority view: according to him, "Israeli" (his term for Israeli Hebrew) is a Semito-European hybrid language, which is the continuation not only of literary Hebrew but also of Yiddish, as well as Polish, Russian, German, English, Ladino, Arabic and other languages spoken by Hebrew revivalists. Thus, "Yiddish is a primary contributor to Israeli Hebrew because it was the mother tongue of the vast majority of revivalists and first pioneers in Eretz Yisrael at the crucial period of the beginning of Israeli Hebrew". According to Zuckermann, although the revivalists wished to speak Hebrew, with Semitic grammar and pronunciation, they could not avoid the Ashkenazi mindset arising from their European background. He argues that their attempt to deny their European roots, negate diasporism and avoid hybridity (as reflected in Yiddish) failed. "Had the revivalists been Arabic-speaking or Berber-speaking Jews (e.g. from Morocco), Israeli Hebrew would have been a totally different language – both genetically and typologically, much more Semitic. The impact of the founder population on Israeli Hebrew is incomparable with that of later immigrants."

So far, neither view has gained significant acceptance among mainstream linguists, and has been criticized by some as being based less on linguistic evidence than post- or anti-Zionist political motivations. However, some linguists, for example American Yiddish scholar Dovid Katz, have employed Zuckermann's glottonym "Israeli" and accept his notion of hybridity. Few would dispute that Hebrew has acquired some European features as a result of having been learned by immigrants as a second language at a crucial formative stage. The identity of the European substrate/adstrate has varied: in the time of the Mandate and the early State, the principal contributor was Yiddish, while today it is American English. There has also been some influence, on vocabulary rather than structure, from Arabic, both in the form of Palestinian Arabic and, during the large scale immigrations of Mizrahi Jews during the 1950-60s, the Yemenite and North African dialects. Some Russian influence may also be observed, both during the founding period and as a result of the wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union following its collapse in 1991.

According to Ethnologue, the currently spoken dialects of Hebrew are "Standard Hebrew (Modern Israeli Hebrew)", Sephardi Hebrew, Oriental Hebrew or Mizrahi Hebrew and Yemenite Hebrew". These refer to two varieties used for actual communication by native speakers in Israel; they differ mainly in pronunciation, and hardly in any other way. Immigrants to Israel are encouraged to adopt "Standard Hebrew" as their daily language.

There are mixed views on the status of the two dialects. On the one hand, prominent Israelis of Sephardic or Oriental origin are admired for the purity of their speech and Yemenite Jews are often employed as newsreaders. On the other hand, the speech of middle-class Ashkenazim is regarded as having a certain Central European sophistication, and many speakers of Mizrahi origin have moved nearer to this version of Standard Hebrew, in some cases even adopting the uvular resh

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