Hebrew language

Hebrew street sign, above in Hebrew alphabet, below in Latin transliteration. Aluf Batslut veAluf Shum^(he) ("The Knight of Onions and the Knight of Garlic") is a story by Hayim Nahman Bialik.

Hebrew (/ˈhiːbruː/; עברית ʿivrit [ʔivˈʁit] or [ʕivˈɾit]) is a West Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, although the language was not referred to by the name Hebrew in the Tanakh. The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Today, Hebrew is spoken by a total of 9 million people worldwide.

Hebrew had ceased to be an everyday spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt.Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and immigrants. It survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. The United States has the second largest Hebrew speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, mostly from Israel.

Hebrew (disambiguation)

Hebrew may refer to:

In linguistics:

Ethnic groups:

In literature:

In biology: