OHR Somayach

Hebrew is the official language in Israel and also one of the world’s oldest living languages. Hebrew is the member of the Canaanite group of Semitic languages. It was the language of early Jews but from 586 BC it started to replace Aramaic. By 70 AD use of Hebrew as an everyday language had largely ceased, but it continued to be used for literary and religious functions as well as Lingua Franca among Jews from different countries. During the mid nineteenth century, the efforts were made to receive Hebrew as the everyday language. Modern Hebrew is spoken by most of the 7 million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer and study in Jewish communities around the world. The earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered was found at Khirbet Qeiyafa in July 2008 by Israel archeologists Yossi Garfinkel.

Classical Hebrew means the spoken language of ancient Israel flourishing between the 10^th century BCE and the turn of the 4^th century CE. It comprises several evolving and overlapping dialects. The phases of Classical Hebrew are often named after important literary works associated with them. The phases are as follows:

1. Archaic Biblical Hebrew (10^th- 16^th century BCE)
2. Standard Biblical Hebrew (around 8^th- 6^th century BCE)
3. Late Biblical Hebrew (5^th- 3^rd century BCE)
4. Israelian Hebrew
5. Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew (3^rd century BCE- 1^st century CE)
6. Mishnaic Hebrew (1^st- 3^rd or 4^th century CE)

The Hebrew alphabets are known variously by scholars as Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically Assyrian script. These alphabets are used in writing of the Hebrew language as well as other Jewish languages, most noticeably, Yiddish, Ladino and Judeo Arabic. There have been two scripts form in use. The original old Hebrew is known as the paleo Hebrew script, while the presented “square” form of the Hebrew alphabets is a stylized form of the Aramaic script. Various styles of representation of letters exist. There is also a cursive Hebrew script, which has also varied over time and place.

The person who is interested to learn Hebrew, must learn the alphabets, so that he will be able to understand the language easily and it will make easier for him to learn Hebrew.

In the traditional form, the Hebrew alphabet is an abjad consisting only of consonants, written form right to left. It has 22 letters, five of which use different forms at the end of the word. The Hebrew alphabet has only one case; there is no distinct capital or lower case letters.

In Hebrew, a noun is made definite by prefixing the noun with the definite article plus a dagesh forte in the first consonant of the noun. In Hebrew when a definite article is placed before a word that begins, the noun is changes from a patach to a segol.

To learn Hebrew, one should take regular classes and work hard to understand this language. Hebrew is not a difficult language but it needs concentration to learn.