Language Research

HEBREW LANGUAGE

The Hebrew language is one of the world's oldest languages, spoken and written today in much the same way as it was more than two thousand years ago. After ceasing to exist as a spoken language about 250 B.C., it was reborn as a modern language in the 19th century, and today is the principal language of Israel.

The history of the Hebrew language is usually divided into four major periods:

• Biblical or Classical Hebrew up until about the 1st century B.C., in which most of the Old Testament is written
• Mishnaic or Rabbinic Hebrew, the language of the Mishna (a collection of Jewish traditions), written about AD 200
• Medieval Hebrew, from about the 6th to the 13th century A.D., when many words were borrowed from Greek, Arabic and other languages
• Modern Hebrew, the language of Israel in modern times

Modern Hebrew is based on the biblical language and contains many innovations designed to meet modern needs. It is the only colloquial speech based on a written language. The pronunciation is a modification of that used by the Sephardic Jews rather that that of the Ashkenazi Jews. The old guttural consonants are not clearly distinguished (except by Oriental Jews) or are lost. The syntax is based on that of the Mishna. Word roots consist usually of only three consonants, to which vowels and other consonants are added to derive words of different parts of speech and meaning. The language is written from right to left in a Semitic script of 22 letters.

The renaissance of Hebrew as a spoken language in the 19th century may be ascribed almost entirely to the efforts of one man: Eliezer ben Yehudah. He devoted his life to the revival of the language, and at the same time adapted it for modern use through the introduction of thousands of modern terms. Hebrew gradually came into use among the Jewish settlers in Palestine and became the official language of the newly created State of Israel in 1948. Today about 3 million people speak Hebrew either as their maternal, adopted, or religious tongue.

YIDDISH LANGUAGE

Yiddish is the language of the Ashkenazi Jewry (Central and Eastern European Jews and their descendants). It is written in the Hebrew alphabet and became one of the world's most widespread languages, appearing in most countries with a Jewish population by the 19th century. Along with Hebrew and Aramaic, it is one of the three major literary languages in Jewish history.

The basic structure of the Yiddish language is a medieval form of German with many borrowed words from Hebrew and a few other languages e.g. Russian. There are numerous flavors and accents of Yiddish, depending on location. Written Yiddish looks identical to Hebrew because it uses Hebrew alphabet letters and it is written from right to left. However, it does not employ the Hebrew vowel system of dots and dashes below the letters. Instead, Yiddish uses certain letters to represent vowels.

Millions of Yiddish speakers were victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The number of speakers was further reduced by official suppression in the Soviet Union, by the semiofficial antagonism of Israeli authorities zealously guarding Modern Hebrew, and through massive voluntary shifts to other primary languages in Western countries. The language nevertheless continues to flourish among the ultra-Orthodox Hasidim in numerous countries. It also has a strong presence among secular students of Yiddish at leading universities, including Columbia University (New York), Hebrew University (Jerusalem), McGill University (Montreal), the University of Oxford, and the University of Paris.

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