Research by linguists has led to the conclusion that languages ​​are grouped together. The Hebrew language is part of the Semitic group and is its foundation. According to legends, it is considered sacred because:

— it was on it that God spoke with his prophet Moses;

- the 10 commandments were written in this language on stone tablets;

— the Holy Scriptures, in many countries called the Old Testament or Tanakh, were written in this language (and also partially in its related Aramaic).

Origin of Ancient Hebrew

The New Encyclopædia Britannica in 1985 (page 567, volume 22) states that the oldest records in the major languages ​​date back to the 2nd or at the latest 3rd millennium BC. Other scientific sources also suggest that ancient languages ​​were even more complex than modern ones (Science Illustrated, 1948). Experts in oriental languages, having traced the point of their origin, also came to the conclusion that it was the land of Shinar mentioned in the Bible that became the starting point for the emergence of these language groups.

Misconception: “All languages ​​come from Hebrew.” This is not true, since the Bible itself (in Genesis 11) clearly shows that many different languages ​​miraculously appeared in ancient Babylon, but before that time people spoke one language - later used by Abraham and his descendants. For this reason, it is called Hebrew, although it was spoken by many groups of people.

Accessible source of Hebrew

The earliest source of information in Hebrew is the Bible. The beginning of its writing dates back to the time of Moses and the exit of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery - the end of the 16th century BC. e. Although many tablets in this language have been found, it is difficult to confirm their earlier origin. Like other ancient languages, Hebrew appears in a complete form and contains an alphabet, grammar rules and a rich vocabulary that allows you to express the whole gamut of human feelings and describe the world around you.

Similarities and differences

The main similarity between ancient Hebrew and other languages ​​is the ability to exchange thoughts and feelings, but the methods of exchange, the alphabet, the writing of characters, the construction of phrases and much more are significantly different:

• Hebrew is “laconic”: it has only 22 letters, there are no vowels in the writing of words, the way of conveying thoughts is extremely simple and concise. At the same time, emotionality and beauty are not lost due to the variety and power of verbs.
• The pronunciation of sounds is also different (the guttural “r”, several variants of pronunciation of the letters “x” and “g”).
• Imagery: instead of the word “shore” in the Hebrew language, for example, the expression “lip of the sea” is used, instead of “anger” - “wide nostrils”. It is not possible to make a literal translation from such a language.

The influence of time?

It is a fact that all languages ​​change over time, but not all to the same extent. As for Hebrew, there has been virtually no change for about 1,500 years since Moses wrote the Torah and other parts of the Scriptures. Therefore, we can talk about the high “stability” of this language. And the life of the Jews then revolved around the Scriptures, so this language was the basis of their communication. In 1982, it was concluded that the grammar and vocabulary of the later books of the Bible are almost the same as the first (International Standard Encyclopedia of the Bible, edited by J. Bromley).

There are few ancient non-biblical texts: the Gezer calendar, Samaritan pottery shards, the Siloam inscription, ostracons from Lachish, the Mishnah, non-religious scrolls from Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls) and some others. Today, interest in ancient Hebrew is very high and its study has brought and will continue to bring many interesting discoveries related to the most ancient cultures.

Valery Fomin

In the Middle Ages, Jews spoke the languages ​​of the countries in which they lived. So in Spain they spoke the Jewish dialect of Spanish, otherwise called “Ladino”. After being expelled from Spain, many Jews moved to the Ottoman Empire, where they continued to use "ladino".

Some former Spanish Jews (Sephardim) settled in Morocco. Here the Judeo-Spanish dialect began to be called "Hakitia". Some Sephardim went to Portugal, where they switched to the Portuguese language or its Jewish dialect. After being expelled from Portugal, the Sephardim settled in Holland, where they switched to the Dutch language.

In medieval France, Jews spoke Judeo-French (Korf), a dialect of the Oil languages ​​widely spoken in the French side in the old days. After the expulsion from France, the Jews in their new place of residence in Germany retained Judeo-French for some time, but soon forgot it and adopted the Yiddish language, a variant of the German language. Eastern European Jews - Ashkenazis - also spoke Yiddish.

This is not a complete list of Jewish languages. In total there were over three dozen of them. Jews began to think about creating their own language almost simultaneously with the emergence of the political movement Zionism, which set as its goal the creation of the Jewish state of Israel.

The process of creating a new language was called the “revival of Hebrew.” Eliezer Ben-Yehuda played a key role in it.

Itzhak Perlman Eliezer (real name Ben-Yehuda) was born in the Russian Empire, on the territory of the modern Vitebsk region of Belarus. Ben-Yehuda's parents dreamed that he would become a rabbi and therefore helped him get a good education. Even in his youth, Eliezer was imbued with the ideas of Zionism and in 1881 emigrated to Palestine.

Here Ben-Yehuda came to the conclusion that only Hebrew could revive and return it to its “historical homeland.” Influenced by his ideals, he decided to develop a new language that could replace Yiddish and other regional dialects as the means of everyday communication among Jews.

His ideals were so strong that Ben Yehuda sought to protect his young son Ben Zion from the influence of languages ​​other than Hebrew. There is a known case when Eliezer loudly shouted at his wife, catching her singing a lullaby to her son in Russian. It is believed that Ben-Zion Ben-Yehuda was a native speaker of Hebrew.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was a major figure in the creation of the Hebrew Language Committee and then the Hebrew Academy, an organization that still exists today. He was also the author of the first Hebrew dictionary.

The introduction of Hebrew into life was a much more difficult task than its creation. Its distribution was carried out through children's schools, where teaching was conducted in Hebrew. The first such school arose in the settlement of Rishon de Zion in 1886. This process was slow. Parents were against their children studying in a language that, in their opinion, was impractical and would be useless in obtaining higher education. The process was also hampered by the lack of textbooks in Hebrew. And at first, the language itself did not have enough vocabulary to describe the world around us. In addition, for a long time they could not decide which pronunciation in Hebrew was correct: Ashkenazi or Sephardic.

The process became more rapid after the arrival of the second wave of Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century. Representatives of this wave were already familiar with literary Hebrew. In Europe, Jewish writers were already publishing their books on it. The most famous among them were Moikher Mendele (Yakov Abramovich), the poet Chaim Bialik, Mikha Berdichevsky and Uri Gnessin. The classics were translated into Hebrew by David Frishman, Shaul Chernyakhovsky and others.

The World Zionist Congress soon adopted Hebrew as its official language. The first city where Hebrew was made an official language was Tel Aviv. In 1909, the city administration here switched to Hebrew. Signs in the new language appeared on the streets and cafes.

Simultaneously with the introduction of Hebrew, there was a campaign to discredit the Yiddish language. Yiddish was declared "jargon" and "not kosher." In 1913, one writer declared: “speaking Yiddish is even less kosher than eating pork.”

The peak of the confrontation between Hebrew and Yiddish was 1913, when the so-called “war of languages” broke out. Then a certain group decided to create the first technical university in Ottoman Palestine to train Jewish engineers. It was decided to teach in Yiddish and German, since there were no technical terms in Hebrew. However, Hebrew supporters opposed the decision and forced the group to admit defeat. After this incident, it became clear that Hebrew would become the official and spoken language of Israel.

Create Hebrew - created, implement - implemented. Now, learned philologists are faced with the difficult task of how to classify Hebrew. It is unclear where and what Ben-Yehuda copied and pasted. Most scholars see modern Hebrew as a continuation of the biblical "Hebrew language." However, there are alternative points of view.

In particular, Paul Wexler argues that Hebrew is not a Semitic language at all, but a Jewish dialect of the Slavic Serbian language. (By Serbs we mean the Slavic Lusatian Serbs living in Germany). In his opinion, all the basic structures of the language and most of the vocabulary are purely Slavic.

Ghilad Zuckermann takes a compromise position between the opinions of Wexler and the “majority”. He considers Hebrew to be a Semitic-European hybrid. In his opinion, Hebrew is a continuation of not only the “biblical language”, but also Yiddish, and also has much from Russian, Polish, German, English, Ladino and Arabic.

Both linguists are subject to criticism, which mostly uses political, religious and Zionist arguments rather than scientific ones.

History of Hebrew
תּוֹלְדוֹת הַלָּשוֹן הָעִבְרִית

The name “Hebrew” actually means “Hebrew (language).” The name “Hebrew” is relatively new, it appeared about a hundred years ago, most likely as a translation from the European term Hebraic, from the word עברי - Jewish. Until then, for a long time, Jews called Hebrew לשון קדש - the holy language. In the Tanakh, in the book of Nehemiah, the language of the Jews is called יהודית - Jewish.
Hebrew belongs to the Semitic family of languages. Of the modern languages, the Semitic group includes Arabic (eastern and Maghreb dialects), Aramaic (various dialects), Maltese (actually a dialect of Arabic), Amharic (the official language of Ethiopia, also the language of most Ethiopian Jews), and various Ethiopian dialects.

4000 - 3000 years ago

According to the most daring Jewish and Christian theologians, it was in Hebrew that the Lord spoke to Adam in the Garden of Eden - almost 6,000 years ago. Scientists are more cautious in their assessments. But according to scientists, Hebrew is an extremely ancient language.

Starting at least from the 20th - 21st centuries. BC, the land of Israel was called Canaan - כנען (Kna'an), and its inhabitants were called Canaanites - כנענים (Kna'anim). To the north of Canaan lay the country later called Phenicia; Apparently, the Phoenicians were the same Canaanites, who had stronger cities (Tire - צור, Sidon - צידון, etc.). As for the language, apparently, the Phoenicians, and in general all the Canaanites, spoke practically the same language as the Jews. (When it comes to the need to translate from language to language, the Tanakh mentions this; however, nowhere is there any mention of the need for translators when communicating between Jews and Canaanites or the inhabitants of Tire - the Phoenicians).

There is evidence about the language of the Canaanites dating back to the 13th-14th centuries. BC. - Tel Amarna cuneiform tablets. The tablets represent letters from Canaan to Egypt, and are written in the Akkadian (Assyro-Babylonian) language. However, here and there in the text as comments, explanations, etc. words of the local (Canaanite) language are inserted - words used in Hebrew to this day: עפר, חומה, אניה, כלוב, שער, שדה, סוס, מס (see Abram Solomonik, “From the History of Hebrew”). Thus, these words (then still in the language of the Canaanites) existed practically in their current form - at least two hundred years before the conquest of Canaan by the Jews.
The biblical account of Abraham's journey from Ur to Canaan is confirmed in cuneiform tablets excavated in Iraq; but of course, it is difficult to say what language Jacob and his sons spoke, and what language the Jews spoke when they came out of Egyptian slavery. One thing is certain - the language that we call Hebrew today is close to the language of the Canaanites, and perhaps is one of its branches. Phoenician and Hebrew (as well as several other dialects) are generally considered to be members of the Canaanite family of languages ​​(much like Russian and Ukrainian come from Old Church Slavonic).
It should be noted here that in this era vowel sounds were not designated at all. Modern words מים, ארון, מלכים were written as מם, ארן, מלכם. (L. Zeliger, “Hebrew”) Therefore, it is difficult to judge when and how the ancient Hebrew and Phoenician diverged, and how exactly they differed. The word שמים was later written by the Phoenicians as שמם, but how can one find out whether this difference was only in the writing, or whether the pronunciation was very different.
The oldest surviving Hebrew inscriptions found in Israel date back almost 3,000 years (the "Gezer calendar"). But scientists believe that the oldest texts of the Tanakh were compiled even earlier, in the 12th century BC. This date is considered to be the beginning of the history of the Hebrew language itself.

A sample of modern Samaritan writing.

Hebrew(Phoenician) letter. The letter, apparently, was adopted by the Jews from the Canaanites. Apparently, it was the Canaanites who were the first to use alphabetic writing. It is assumed that Phoenician letters come from Egyptian hieroglyphs. (The oldest variety of this script is called Proto-Canaanite). Almost all modern alphabets, including modern Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Latin, originated from this alphabet. (Another alphabet, in which the shape of the letters was based on cuneiform, was used in the city of Ugarit in the north of Phenicia - but this alphabet did not take root, and disappeared with the destruction of the city.) Today, the ancient Hebrew script (albeit in a greatly modified form) is used for writing of their Torah scrolls, the Samaritans are a once split-off nation from the Jews (today there are about 600-700 people).

2500 years ago

After numerous contacts with Assyria and Babylonia, particularly after the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian Exile (~2500 years ago), Hebrew was significantly influenced by Aramaic. This was expressed both in borrowings (which were later strengthened in the language) and in numerous phrases, many of which later disappeared and were preserved only in literary monuments.
It is interesting that through the Aramaic language (more precisely, through the Babylonian version of Aramaic) not only purely Aramaic, but also Sumerian (!) words penetrated into Hebrew. (The Sumerians were the first inhabitants of Mesopotamia known to us, more ancient than the Babylonians and Assyrians.) Thus, the words היכל and תרנגול, which have completely taken root to this day, came into Hebrew from Aramaic, into Aramaic from Akkadian, and into Akkadian from Sumerian (see. Baruch Podolsky, “Conversations on Hebrew”). The names of the months of the Jewish calendar also came from Babylon.

The modern form of Hebrew letters also appears to have come from Babylon - our script is called "square" or "Assyrian" script. However, the Hebrew (aka Phoenician) script was also used by Jews until the Bar Kokhba uprising. The inscriptions on the coins minted by Bar Kochba are the last inscriptions made in the ancient Hebrew script.
After the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel from Babylonian captivity, the struggle for national revival began, including linguistic revival. Nehemiah writes:

In addition, many Jews still in Babylon switched to Aramaic. The Book of Ezra is written half in Aramaic; but the book of Nehemiah was written entirely in Hebrew. The struggle for a national language was crowned with success. After the Babylonian captivity there were still Jews who knew Hebrew; Despite the spread of Aramaic throughout the Middle East, the entire population of Judea spoke Hebrew again - and spoke it for almost a thousand years.

Square (Assyrian) letter. From Babylon, the ancient Jews brought the letters that we use now. In the Jewish tradition, these letters are called the “Assyrian letter” - כתב אשורי (ktav Ashuri), as opposed to the ancient letter - כתב דעץ (ktav da'ats). The exact meaning of the word דעץ is not known; we only know that the Talmud uses this word to describe the Hebrew script. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the “Assyrian letter” also developed from the Phoenician. (The modern Assyrian alphabet is more similar to Arabic writing, and only vaguely resembles Hebrew letters.)

2000 years ago

After the destruction of the Second Temple and the loss of statehood by the Jews, Hebrew began to be gradually replaced by the Aramaic language. As a result of two revolts against Rome (the Jewish War and Bar Kochba's revolt), Judea acquired a reputation as a "rebellious province". The Romans continued their repression long after the last revolt had been drowned in blood, and the Jewish population of Judea steadily declined. Jews fled to neighboring countries where the population spoke mainly Aramaic. At that time, translations of the oldest Jewish literature into Aramaic were made (for example, Targum Onkelos). At the same time, the code of Jewish legislation - the Mishnah - was written down. The Mishnah and its first commentaries are written in Hebrew; but the further it went, the more Hebrew was replaced by Aramaic. The Mishnah and commentaries on it (Gmara, Tosefta) together made up the Talmud - a code of Jewish legislation (existing in two versions: Babylonian and Jerusalem.) If Hebrew was called leshon kodesh (holy language), then Aramaic Jews began to call leshon ha-hahamim (language of the sages ) - since most of the Talmud is written in Aramaic.
After the Arab conquest, following the grammarians of the Arabic language, the first attempts were made to analyze the grammar of Hebrew: Saadia Gaon (8th - 9th centuries AD) and his student Menachem ben Saruk began to do this.

Vocalizations. Hebrew finally ceased to be a living language around the 4th century. AD There was a danger of losing the correct pronunciation of sacred texts, and already in the 6th century, vowel systems were developed to clarify pronunciation. At first, several vocalization systems arose (i.e., “Tiveriad,” “Babylonian,” and “Palestinian”). By the 10th century, the Ben Asher dynasty from Tiberias finally canonized the system of vowels, which was based on the Tiberian system - this system became generally accepted. (The Babylonian system of vowels is still used by Yemenite Jews to vocalize some books.)
Full writing. Gradually, “mothers of reading” are introduced into ancient orthography - the letters א, ה, ו, י to designate some vowels. But the use of “reading mothers” was initially limited to certain grammatical phenomena, and in most cases depended only on the whim of the scribe. A little later, in the era of the Talmud, “mothers of reading” were already systematically used.

From the “Virtual Ulpan” website

Arabic, Akkadian (Assyro-Babylonian), Ethiopian and some other languages ​​of Western Asia. The Phoenician and Ugaritic languages, which together with it belong to the Canaanite branch of the Semitic group of languages, are especially close to Hebrew.

The Semitic group of languages ​​is itself one of the branches of the Semitic-Hamitic language family, to which, along with the Semitic, also belong the Egyptian languages, Berber (North Africa), Cushitic (Ethiopia, Somalia and neighboring territories) and Chadic languages ​​(Northern Nigeria, Northern Cameroon , Chad). The genetic connections of Hebrew do not end there yet: according to a number of researchers, the Semitic-Hamitic language family reveals an ancient relationship with the Indo-European family of languages, with the Kartvelian languages ​​(Georgian and others), with the Uralic (Finno-Ugric and Samoyed), with the Turkic, Mongolian , the Dravidian languages ​​of India and with some other languages ​​of Eurasia, forming together with them the Nostratic macrofamily of languages.

History of Hebrew

Several periods can be distinguished in the history of Hebrew:

Biblical Hebrew (12th–2nd centuries BC)

The main linguistic monuments of this period are the books of the Bible. As a matter of fact, in the texts of the Bible, only the literal part (that is, primarily the consonants) is the true monument of Biblical Hebrew, while diacritics (נְקֻדּוֹת), conveying vowels and doubling consonants, were added only at the end of the 1st millennium AD. e. Although the Jewish religious tradition of reading the Bible that they transmitted goes back to the pronunciation that prevailed in the biblical period, it also reflects phonetic changes (natural phonetic transitions) in the Hebrew of subsequent eras and therefore does not belong to Biblical Hebrew. Part of the apocrypha was also written in Hebrew at the end of the biblical period (see Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha), but only a few fragments of them have reached us in the Hebrew original. The monuments of biblical Hebrew also include a few inscriptions from that era. The oldest of them is the calendar from Gezer, 10th century. BC e.

Post-Biblical Hebrew (1st century BC - 2nd century AD)

The main Hebrew monuments from this period are the Dead Sea Scrolls texts, the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and partly halakhic midrashim. If the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls are mainly written in a literary language that continues the traditions of Biblical Hebrew, then the Mishnah and Tosefta are close in language to the living spoken language of that time and significantly deviate from the norms of Biblical Hebrew. During this era, Hebrew begins to be replaced from everyday use by the Aramaic language - the language of interethnic communication in Western Asia. Hebrew survived as a spoken language for the longest time in Judea (until the 2nd century AD, and according to some data, perhaps until the 4th century AD), but in the north (in Galilee) it fell out of spoken use earlier , remaining only a language of writing and culture. Mishnaic Hebrew differs from the biblical language in syntax (sentence construction, use of verb tenses, etc.), in morphology (a modern system of three verb tenses has developed, possessive pronouns like שֶׁלִּי [šεl"lī] `my` and many others have appeared), in vocabulary ( some previously used words were replaced by new ones, and many borrowings from Aramaic and Greek entered Hebrew). There were, apparently, phonetic changes (especially in vowels), but they are not reflected in the graphics and are therefore hidden from us.

Talmudic Hebrew (3rd–7th centuries CE)

Having ceased to be a means of oral communication, Hebrew remains as the language of religion and writing. Jews speak mainly dialects of Aramaic: Western Late Aramaic in Palestine and one of the Eastern Late Aramaic dialects in Mesopotamia. Under the influence of Aramaic dialects, three norms of Hebrew pronunciation emerge (when reading biblical and other texts): one in Mesopotamia (Babylonian pronunciation) and two in the Land of Israel (Tiberias and the so-called “Palestinian” pronunciation). All three pronunciation traditions are recorded as having been created in the 7th–9th centuries. n. e. systems of diacritic vowels (נְקוּדוֹת): Babylonian, Tiberian and Palestinian. The most detailed of them is Tiberias. Over time, it displaced other systems and is still used by Jews to this day. The Hebrew of this era experienced significant Aramaic influence also in vocabulary and syntax. The main monuments of Talmudic Hebrew are the Hebrew parts of the Gemara of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds and part of the midrash. At the turn of this and subsequent eras, the first works of religious poetry were created (see Piyut).

Medieval Hebrew (8th–18th centuries CE)

Jews living in various countries of Europe, Asia and North Africa continue to be active in literary and cultural activities in Hebrew. The richest Jewish medieval literature in Hebrew covers a wide range of topics and is diverse in genres: religious poetry (piyut), secular poetry (which reached its peak in the work of Spanish-Jewish poets of the 10th–13th centuries), moral stories, translated prose (for example, the school of Ibn Tibbon in the 12th century). –15th centuries; see Tibbonids), scientific literature (linguistic, philosophical, geographical, historical, mathematical, medical), commentaries on the Bible and Talmud (for example, Rashi), legal literature, theology, Kabbalistic literature, etc. (see Shlomo Ibn Gabirol; X good luck X a-Levi; Kabbalah; Maimonides; Responsa; Philosophy).

New topics and new genres of literature are associated with the enrichment of vocabulary. Hebrew vocabulary is enriched due to word formation (word production through Hebrew affixes and models from Hebrew and Aramaic roots, word formation by analogy), borrowings (mainly from Aramaic), distortions (modeled on the Arabic literary language, and later European languages), semantic changes words and development of phraseology. The syntax also develops and becomes more complex. In the Galut countries, Hebrew is influenced by the languages ​​of everyday communication (Middle High German and the Yiddish language derived from it, Old Spanish and the Judesmo derived from it (see Jewish-Spanish language), dialects of Arabic, Aramaic, Persian and other languages) and evolves phonetically along with evolution these languages ​​and their dialects. Thus, in accordance with the development of Middle High German ō in ow in the western dialects of Yiddish (Germany), in oj in the central dialects (Poland, Ukraine, Romania), in ej in the northern dialects (Lithuania, Belarus): grōs `big` > Western Yiddish - grows, central Yiddish - grojs, northern Yiddish - grejs, Hebrew ō experiences the same evolution: עוֹלָם ['o"lām] `world (light)` > "owlem, "ojlem, ejlem.

This is how traditional systems of Hebrew pronunciation (reading texts) that exist to this day developed among various Jewish communities: Ashkenazi (in Central and Eastern Europe), Sephardic (among immigrants from Spain), Yemenite, Baghdad, North African, New Aramaic (among the Jews of Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, speaking modern Aramaic dialects), Persian, Bukhara (Central Asia), Tat (in the eastern Caucasus), Georgian and others.

Hebrew era X Askals (18th–19th centuries)

At the turn of the 19th century. and 20th century An unprecedented event in the history of languages ​​occurs - the revival of a dead ancient language. Languages ​​that are not used for everyday oral communication and are not native to anyone are considered dead, even if these languages ​​(like Latin in the Middle Ages and Sanskrit in the 1st–2nd millennium AD) continue to be used in writing and worship and literary creativity. The revival of dead languages ​​has never been observed in history and was considered unthinkable. And yet, the dead language, which was called Hebrew, was revived as a natural living language - the language of everyday communication of an entire people.

The pioneer of the Hebrew revival was Eli'ezer Ben-Iye X uda. Arriving in Jerusalem in 1881, he began intensively promoting the revival of spoken Hebrew as an integral part of the spiritual rebirth of the nation. His propaganda and publishing activities, his Hebrew dictionaries (pocket and complete multi-volume) and his personal example (in the Ben-Yeh family X The Ouds spoke only Hebrew, and his eldest son was the first child whose native language became Hebrew) played a primary role in the development of Hebrew into the language of everyday oral communication. Ben-Ieh Initiative X uda and his companions was supported by Jewish repatriates of the first and second aliyah. The most significant factor in the revival of Hebrew was the schools in Jewish agricultural settlements, where Hebrew served as the language of instruction and communication. The pupils of these schools later spoke Hebrew in their families, and for their children Hebrew was already their native language.

E. Ben-Ye X ud and the Hebrew Language Committee (Va'ad) headed by him since 1890 X ha-lashon X a-‘Hebrew, וַעַד הַלָּשׁוֹן הָעִבְרִית ) did a lot of work to create words missing in the language (mainly through the use of Hebrew and Aramaic roots and Hebrew word-formation models) and to standardize the language. This work is continued by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, created in 1953 (on the basis of the Hebrew Language Committee).

According to Ben-Yeh X uds, the phonetics of the revived Hebrew was supposed to be based on Sephardic pronunciation (that is, on the pronunciation of people from Spain and eastern countries). The basis for this choice is that Sephardic pronunciation is closer to Ashkenazi (Central and Eastern European) to the ancient pronunciation of Hebrew, or more precisely, to the conventional school reading that is accepted in European universities and Christian seminaries when studying Biblical Hebrew.

Sephardic pronunciation also retained the ancient place of stress in the word, while in Ashkenazi pronunciation in final stressed words and forms the stress is usually shifted to the penultimate syllable: יָתוֹם `orphan` (biblical jā" tōm) in Sephardic and university-seminary pronunciation sounds ja"tom, and in Ashkenazi - "josejm and "jusojm. Sephardic pronunciation was therefore perceived as closer to the original, and Ashkenazi - as spoiled, associated with galut and therefore unacceptable.

Indeed, in the above-mentioned respects (the fate of תֿ, holam, tsere, kamatz and accents) the revived Hebrew is similar to Sephardic pronunciation. However, in almost all other respects, the usual phonetic norm of modern Hebrew turned out to be close to the Yiddish language: glottal ע [‘] and ח as special phonemes disappeared (despite the efforts of Ben-Ie X uds and purists), ר is realized as a uvular (grading) R, the vowel of the first syllable has fallen (rather than giving e, as in Eastern and Sephardic pronunciation): דְּבַשׁ `honey` - "dvaš, not de"vaš, intonation in Hebrew very close to Yiddish intonation. The phonetics of modern Hebrew can be roughly described as "Sephardic Hebrew with an Ashkenazi accent." The reason is clear: most immigrants from the first half of the 20th century. came from Russia, from Eastern and Central Europe, and their native language was mainly Yiddish (or German).

In the 3rd–19th centuries. n. e., when Hebrew was only a language of writing and culture, its evolution followed the patterns of historical change in dead languages ​​functioning as cultural languages ​​- such as medieval Latin, classical and Buddhist Sanskrit: the grammatical forms of words are conserved (changes can only concern the degree of their usage and semantic content of grammatical categories), phonetic changes are only a projection of the phonetic history of spoken substrate languages, and only vocabulary develops relatively freely: it is replenished with new lexical units due to word formation, borrowing from other languages ​​and semantic changes in words; There may be a struggle between synonyms, words falling out of use, etc.

After the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, the picture changed dramatically. As in any living language, autonomous (that is, independent of the influence of other languages) phonetic changes occur in Hebrew, originating in common speech or in the speech of young people and then spreading to ever wider sections of the population. This is precisely the nature of, for example, the weakening and complete disappearance of h, especially at the beginning of a word: aši"uR it"xil instead of hašI"uR hit"xil ( הַשִׁעוּר הִתְחִיל ) `lesson has started`. Changes in morphology now also affect the grammatical forms of the word: in place of ktav"tem (כְּתַבְתֶּם) `you wrote` in colloquial Hebrew they pronounce ka"tavtem (by analogy with other forms in the past tense paradigm: ka"tavti `I wrote`, ka" tavta `you wrote`, ka"tavnu `we wrote`, etc.).

As in any living language, such changes in morphology appear initially in common speech and in the speech of children, and then can penetrate into the colloquial norm (as the example given) or remain in common speech (as the form ha"zoti 'this' in literary and neutral colloquial ha"zot (הַזֹּאת). And new processes have appeared in the development of vocabulary: along with new formations that arise in the written speech of writers, journalists, scientists and lawyers or decreed by the Academy of the Hebrew Language, there are many new formations that originate in vernacular or slang and penetrate from there into the generally spoken norm, and sometimes into the literary language: מְצֻבְרָח `upset` was at first a comic slang neologism produced according to the meCuC"CaC model (passive participle pu"'al from four-consonant verbs) from מַצַּב רוּחַ `state of mind, mood` (in colloquially "bad mood") The comical nature of the neologism is that the participle is formed from a phrase and the initial m- of the generating stem simultaneously serves as a prefix of the participle. However, now the word has lost its comic and slang character and has become generally spoken; it is quite widely used in fiction. New words are derived from it: הִצְטַבְרֵחַ `(he) was upset.

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In the Middle Ages, Jews spoke the languages ​​of the countries in which they lived. So in Spain they spoke the Jewish dialect of Spanish, otherwise called “Ladino”. After being expelled from Spain, many Jews moved to the Ottoman Empire, where they continued to use "ladino".

Some former Spanish Jews (Sephardim) settled in Morocco. Here the Judeo-Spanish dialect began to be called "Hakitia". Some Sephardim went to Portugal, where they switched to the Portuguese language or its Jewish dialect. After being expelled from Portugal, the Sephardim settled in Holland, where they switched to the Dutch language.

In medieval France, Jews spoke Judeo-French (Korf), a dialect of the Oil languages ​​widely spoken in the French side in the old days. After the expulsion from France, the Jews in their new place of residence in Germany retained Judeo-French for some time, but soon forgot it and adopted the Yiddish language, a variant of the German language. Eastern European Jews - Ashkenazis - also spoke Yiddish.

This is not a complete list of Jewish languages. In total there were over three dozen of them. Jews began to think about creating their own language almost simultaneously with the emergence of the political movement Zionism, which set as its goal the creation of the Jewish state of Israel.

The process of creating a new language was called the “revival of Hebrew.” Eliezer Ben-Yehuda played a key role in it.

Itzhak Perlman Eliezer (real name Ben-Yehuda) was born in the Russian Empire, on the territory of the modern Vitebsk region of Belarus. Ben-Yehuda's parents dreamed that he would become a rabbi and therefore helped him get a good education. Even in his youth, Eliezer was imbued with the ideas of Zionism and in 1881 emigrated to Palestine.

Here Ben-Yehuda came to the conclusion that only Hebrew could revive and return it to its “historical homeland.” Influenced by his ideals, he decided to develop a new language that could replace Yiddish and other regional dialects as the means of everyday communication among Jews.

His ideals were so strong that Ben Yehuda sought to protect his young son Ben Zion from the influence of languages ​​other than Hebrew. There is a known case when Eliezer loudly shouted at his wife, catching her singing a lullaby to her son in Russian. It is believed that Ben-Zion Ben-Yehuda was a native speaker of Hebrew.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was a major figure in the creation of the Hebrew Language Committee and then the Hebrew Academy, an organization that still exists today. He was also the author of the first Hebrew dictionary.

The introduction of Hebrew into life was a much more difficult task than its creation. Its distribution was carried out through children's schools, where teaching was conducted in Hebrew. The first such school arose in the settlement of Rishon de Zion in 1886. This process was slow. Parents were against their children studying in an impractical language that would prove useless in obtaining higher education. The process was also hampered by the lack of textbooks in Hebrew. And at first, the language itself did not have enough vocabulary to describe the world around us. Moreover, for a long time they could not decide which pronunciation in Hebrew is correct: Ashkenazi or Sephardic.

The process began to accelerate after the arrival of the second wave of Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century. Representatives of this wave were already familiar with literary Hebrew. In Europe, Jewish writers were already publishing their books on it. The most famous among them were Moikher Mendele (Yakov Abramovich), the poet Chaim Bialik, Mikha Berdichevsky and Uri Gnessin. The classics were translated into Hebrew by David Frishman, Shaul Chernyakhovsky and others.

The World Zionist Congress soon adopted Hebrew as its official language. The first city where Hebrew was made an official language was Tel Aviv. In 1909, the city administration here switched to Hebrew. Signs in the new language appeared on the streets and cafes.

Simultaneously with the introduction of Hebrew, there was a campaign to discredit the Yiddish language. Yiddish was declared "jargon" and "not kosher." In 1913, one writer declared: “speaking Yiddish is even less kosher than eating pork.”

The peak of the confrontation between Hebrew and Yiddish was 1913, when the so-called “war of languages” broke out. Then a certain group decided to create the first technical university in Ottoman Palestine to train Jewish engineers. It was decided to teach in Yiddish and German, since there were no technical terms in Hebrew. However, Hebrew supporters opposed the decision and forced the group to admit defeat. After this incident, it became clear that Hebrew would become the official and spoken language of Israel.

Create Hebrew - created, implement - implemented. Now, learned philologists are faced with the difficult task of how to classify Hebrew. It is unclear where and what Ben-Yehuda copied and pasted. Most scholars see modern Hebrew as a continuation of the biblical "Hebrew language." However, there are alternative points of view.

In particular, Paul Wexler argues that Hebrew is not a Semitic language at all, but a Jewish dialect of the Slavic Serbian language. (By Serbs we mean the Slavic Lusatian Serbs living in Germany). In his opinion, all the basic structures of the language and most of the vocabulary are purely Slavic.

Ghilad Zuckermann takes a compromise position between the opinions of Wexler and the “majority”. He considers Hebrew to be a Semitic-European hybrid. In his opinion, Hebrew is a continuation of not only the “biblical language”, but also Yiddish, and also has a lot from Russian, Polish, German, English, Ladino and Arabic.

Both linguists are criticized. In which mostly political, religious and Zionist arguments are expressed rather than scientific ones.

Original taken from statin V

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As you understand, no Jewish people ever existed in ancient times. Attempts to trace Hebrew square letters back to the time of Ezra (458 BC) have all failed. Those people who are called Israelites today are a multinational collection of proselytes from all over the world. Language - Hebrew is a completely artificially created language. Once upon a time, proselytes who were expelled from Spain to the Middle East, using the digital gematria of the Cabal, compiled their own version of the scriptures called the Torah. The Masoretic text is a modern disguise, beginning in the common era and perfected by Tiberius.

The outstanding orientalist and scientist Klaproth resolutely denied the antiquity of the so-called Hebrew alphabet on the grounds that the Hebrew square letters with which the biblical manuscripts were written and which we use in print probably originated from the Palmyra script. We are assured that the Jews took their alphabet from the Babylonians during their captivity. But there are scholars who do not go back to the now famous square Hebrew letters beyond the second half of the fourth century AD. Hebrew is considered very ancient, and yet nowhere on the ancient monuments is there a trace of it, not even in Chaldea, among the large number of inscriptions of various kinds discovered on the ruins of that country. The Hebrew Bible is exactly the same as Homer printed in English rather than Greek letters, or Shakespeare's works written phonographically in the Burmese language. Even philologists prove that not only Egyptian, but even Mongolian is older than Hebrew.

"The Hebrew language, that is, the universal language called Hebrew, never existed. It is a language without a single original root, a language composed of Greek, Arabic and Chaldean elements. I was able to prove this to Professor Rawson of Yale College. Take any Hebrew word you like, and I will prove to you that its root is Arabic, ancient Greek or Chaldean. Hebrew is akin to a colorful harlequin costume made from multi-colored scraps. All biblical names are formed on the basis of foreign borrowings; their structure is transparent, and it is easy to establish what is what."