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103-514: The Mishnaic Hebrew language, or Early Rabbinic Hebrew language, is one of the direct ancient descendants of Biblical Hebrew as preserved after the Babylonian captivity , and definitively recorded by Jewish sages in writing the Mishnah and other contemporary documents. A transitional form of the language occurs in the other works of Tannaitic literature dating from the century beginning with

206-416: A diacritic and as an independent letter (though not part of the alphabet). In Tundra Nenets , it is represented by the letters apostrophe ⟨ʼ⟩ and double apostrophe ⟨ˮ⟩ . In Japanese , glottal stops occur at the end of interjections of surprise or anger and are represented by the character ⟨ っ ⟩ . In the graphic representation of most Philippine languages ,

309-544: A "t" is usually not aspirated in syllables ending either in a vowel + "t", such as "cat" or "outside"; or in a "t" + unstressed vowel + "n", such as "mountain" or "Manhattan". This is referred to as a "held t" as the airflow is stopped by tongue at the ridge behind the teeth. However, there is a trend of younger speakers in the Mid-Atlantic states to replace the "held t" with a glottal stop, so that "Manhattan" sounds like "Man-haʔ-in" or "Clinton" like "Cli(n)ʔ-in", where "ʔ"

412-620: A Hebrew dialect, though it possessed distinctive Aramaic features. Although Ugaritic shows a large degree of affinity to Hebrew in poetic structure, vocabulary, and some grammar, it lacks some Canaanite features (like the Canaanite shift and the shift */ð/ > /z/ ), and its similarities are more likely a result of either contact or preserved archaism. Hebrew underwent the Canaanite shift, where Proto-Semitic /aː/ tended to shift to /oː/ , perhaps when stressed. Hebrew also shares with

515-482: A Northwest Semitic language, Hebrew shows the shift of initial */w/ to /j/ , a similar independent pronoun system to the other Northwest Semitic languages (with third person pronouns never containing /ʃ/ ), some archaic forms, such as /naħnu/ 'we', first person singular pronominal suffix -i or -ya, and /n/ commonly preceding pronominal suffixes. Case endings are found in Northwest Semitic languages in

618-491: A glottal stop can be added exceptionally for emphatic reasons in particular circumstances. For instance, although the Latin language would normally avoid glottal stops, the exameter requires the reader to produce a glottal stop – to be regarded by all means as a consontant – before odiīs (i.e. “jactētur ʔodiīs”) in verse 668 of Virgil 's Aeneid : lītora jactētur odiīs Jūnōnis inīquae The table below demonstrates how widely

721-469: A later stage of the language. These additions were added after 600 CE; Hebrew had already ceased being used as a spoken language around 200 CE. Biblical Hebrew as reflected in the consonantal text of the Bible and in extra-biblical inscriptions may be subdivided by era. The oldest form of Biblical Hebrew, Archaic Hebrew, is found in poetic sections of the Bible and inscriptions dating to around 1000 BCE,

824-570: A literary medium, in which the Mishnah, Tosefta, baraitot and Tannaitic midrashim would be composed. The second stage begins with the Amoraim , and sees RH being replaced by Aramaic as the spoken vernacular, surviving only as a literary language. Many of the characteristic features of Mishnaic Hebrew pronunciation may well have been found already in the period of Late Biblical Hebrew. A notable characteristic distinguishing it from Biblical Hebrew of

927-457: A low rate and sudden drop in intensity. Features of the glottal stop: In the traditional romanization of many languages, such as Arabic, the glottal stop is transcribed with the apostrophe ⟨ʼ⟩ or the symbol ⟨ʾ⟩ , which is the source of the IPA character ⟨ ʔ ⟩. In many Polynesian languages that use the Latin alphabet , however, the glottal stop

1030-618: A shift from Aramaic to Hebrew in Judaea during the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt: It is interesting that the earlier documents are written in Aramaic while the later ones are in Hebrew. Possibly the change was made by a special decree of Bar-Kokhba who wanted to restore Hebrew as the official language of the state. Sigalit Ben-Zion remarks, "[I]t seems that this change came as a result of

1133-607: A silence. Although this segment is not a phoneme in English, it occurs phonetically in nearly all dialects of English, as an allophone of /t/ in the syllable coda. Speakers of Cockney, Scottish English and several other British dialects also pronounce an intervocalic /t/ between vowels as in city . In Received Pronunciation , a glottal stop is inserted before a tautosyllabic voiceless stop: stoʼp, thaʼt, knoʼck, waʼtch, also leaʼp, soaʼk, helʼp, pinʼch. In American English ,

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1236-777: A superscript ס above the ש to indicate it took the value /s/ , while the Masoretes added the shin dot to distinguish between the two varieties of the letter. The original Hebrew alphabet consisted only of consonants , but the letters א , ה , ו , י , also were used to indicate vowels, known as matres lectionis when used in this function. It is thought that this was a product of phonetic development: for instance, *bayt ('house') shifted to בֵּית in construct state but retained its spelling. While no examples of early Hebrew orthography have been found, older Phoenician and Moabite texts show how First Temple period Hebrew would have been written. Phoenician inscriptions from

1339-484: A vowel in sandhi, as well as Rabbi Saadia Gaon 's attestation to the use of this alternation in Tiberian Aramaic at the beginning of the 10th century CE. The Dead Sea scrolls show evidence of confusion of the phonemes /ħ ʕ h ʔ/ , e.g. חמר ħmr for Masoretic אָמַר /ʔɔˈmar/ 'he said'. However the testimony of Jerome indicates that this was a regionalism and not universal. Confusion of gutturals

1442-588: A word with less or more matres lectionis, respectively. The Hebrew Bible was presumably originally written in a more defective orthography than found in any of the texts known today. Of the extant textual witnesses of the Hebrew Bible, the Masoretic text is generally the most conservative in its use of matres lectionis, with the Samaritan Pentateuch and its forebearers being more full and

1545-537: Is also evident in the later-developed Tiberian vocalization system. Qumran Hebrew, attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls from ca. 200 BCE to 70 CE, is a continuation of Late Biblical Hebrew. Qumran Hebrew may be considered an intermediate stage between Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew, though Qumran Hebrew shows its own idiosyncratic dialectal features. Dialect variation in Biblical Hebrew

1648-552: Is also not directly indicated by Hebrew orthography but is clearly attested by later developments: It is written with ⟨ ש ⟩ (also used for /ʃ/ ) but later merged with /s/ (normally indicated with ⟨ ס ⟩ ). As a result, three etymologically distinct phonemes can be distinguished through a combination of spelling and pronunciation: /s/ written ⟨ ס ⟩ , /ʃ/ written ⟨ ש ⟩ , and /ś/ (pronounced /ɬ/ but written ⟨ ש ⟩ ). The specific pronunciation of /ś/ as [ɬ]

1751-818: Is also used to express an imperative in Modern Hebrew). For example, Pirqe Avot 1:3: הוא היה אומר, אל תהיו כעבדים המשמשין את הרב "He would say, don't be like slaves serving the master...", lit. "...you will not be...". In a sense, one could say that the form pertains to the future in Mishnaic Hebrew as well, but it invariably has a modal (imperative, volitional, etc.) aspect in the main clause. Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew ( Hebrew : עִבְרִית מִקְרָאִית ‎ , romanized :  ʿiḇrîṯ miqrāʾîṯ ( Ivrit Miqra'it ) or לְשׁוֹן הַמִּקְרָא ‎ , ləšôn ham-miqrāʾ ( Leshon ha-Miqra ) ), also called Classical Hebrew ,

1854-940: Is an archaic form of the Hebrew language , a language in the Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel , roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea . The term ʿiḇrîṯ "Hebrew" was not used for the language in the Hebrew Bible , which was referred to as שְֹפַת כְּנַעַן ‎ śəp̄aṯ kənaʿan "language of Canaan" or יְהוּדִית ‎ Yəhûḏîṯ , " Judean ", but it

1957-530: Is attested to by the well-known shibboleth incident of Judges 12:6, where Jephthah 's forces from Gilead caught Ephraimites trying to cross the Jordan River by making them say שִׁבֹּ֤לֶת š ibboleṯ ('ear of corn') The Ephraimites' identity was given away by their pronunciation: סִבֹּ֤לֶת s ibboleṯ . The apparent conclusion is that the Ephraimite dialect had /s/ for standard /ʃ/ . As an alternative explanation, it has been suggested that

2060-578: Is based on comparative evidence ( /ɬ/ is the corresponding Proto-Semitic phoneme and still attested in Modern South Arabian languages as well as early borrowings (e.g. balsam < Greek balsamon < Hebrew baśam ). /ɬ/ began merging with /s/ in Late Biblical Hebrew, as indicated by interchange of orthographic ⟨ ש ⟩ and ⟨ ס ⟩ , possibly under the influence of Aramaic, and this became

2163-425: Is disputed, likely ejective or pharyngealized . Earlier Biblical Hebrew possessed three consonants not distinguished in writing and later merged with other consonants. The stop consonants developed fricative allophones under the influence of Aramaic , and these sounds eventually became marginally phonemic . The pharyngeal and glottal consonants underwent weakening in some regional dialects, as reflected in

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2266-697: Is found primarily from the first to the fourth centuries, corresponding to the Roman period after the destruction of the Second Temple in the Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE) . It developed under the profound influence of Middle Aramaic . Also called Tannaitic Hebrew or Early Rabbinic Hebrew, it is represented by the bulk of the Mishnah ( משנה , published around 200) and the Tosefta within the Talmud , and by some of

2369-481: Is more consistent in using the definite article ה- , the accusative marker את , distinguishing between simple and waw-consecutive verb forms, and in using particles like אשר and כי rather than asyndeton . Biblical Hebrew from after the Babylonian exile in 587 BCE is known as 'Late Biblical Hebrew'. Late Biblical Hebrew shows Aramaic influence in phonology, morphology, and lexicon, and this trend

2472-563: Is observed by noting the preservation of the double phonemes of each letter in one Sephardic reading tradition, and by noting that these phonemes are distinguished consistently in the Septuagint of the Pentateuch (e.g. Isaac יצחק Yīṣ ḥ āq = Ἰσαάκ versus Rachel רחל Rā ḫ ēl = Ῥαχήλ ), but this becomes more sporadic in later books and is generally absent in translations of Ezra and Nehemiah . The phoneme /ɬ/ ,

2575-567: Is often written as ־יא in analogy to words like היא , הביא , e.g. כיא , sometimes מיא . ⟨ ה ⟩ is found finally in forms like חוטה (Tiberian חוטא ), קורה (Tiberian קורא ) while ⟨ א ⟩ may be used for an a-quality vowel in final position (e.g. עליהא ) and in medial position (e.g. יאתום ). Pre-Samaritan and Samaritan texts show full spellings in many categories (e.g. כוחי vs. Masoretic כחי in Genesis 49:3) but only rarely show full spelling of

2678-427: Is the Hebrew Bible. Epigraphic materials from the area of Israelite territory are written in a form of Hebrew called Inscriptional Hebrew, although this is meagerly attested. According to Waltke & O'Connor, Inscriptional Hebrew "is not strikingly different from the Hebrew preserved in the Masoretic text." The damp climate of Israel caused the rapid deterioration of papyrus and parchment documents, in contrast to

2781-495: Is the glottal stop. This may have crossed over from African American Vernacular English , particularly that of New York City. Most English speakers today often use a glottal stop before the initial vowel of words beginning with a vowel, particularly at the beginning of sentences or phrases or when a word is emphasized. This is also known as "hard attack". Traditionally in Received Pronunciation , "hard attack"

2884-507: Is viewed as a Central Semitic innovation. Some argue that /s, z, sˤ/ were affricated ( /ts, dz, tsˤ/ ), but Egyptian starts using s in place of earlier ṯ to represent Canaanite s around 1000 BC. It is likely that Canaanite was already dialectally split by that time, and the northern Early Phoenician dialect that the Greeks were in contact with could have preserved the affricate pronunciation until c.  800 BC at least, unlike

2987-628: Is written with a rotated apostrophe, ⟨ʻ⟩ (called ʻokina in Hawaiian and Samoan ), which is commonly used to transcribe the Arabic ayin as well (also ⟨ʽ⟩ ) and is the source of the IPA character for the voiced pharyngeal fricative ⟨ ʕ ⟩. In Malay the glottal stop is represented by the letter ⟨k⟩ (at the end of words), in Võro and Maltese by ⟨q⟩ . Another way of writing

3090-666: The Aramaic script , a separate descendant of the Phoenician script, became widespread throughout the region, gradually displacing Paleo-Hebrew. The oldest documents that have been found in the Aramaic Script are fragments of the scrolls of Exodus, Samuel, and Jeremiah found among the Dead Sea scrolls, dating from the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BCE. It seems that the earlier biblical books were originally written in

3193-646: The Dead Sea Scrolls , notably the Copper Scroll and the Bar Kokhba Letters . Dead Sea Scrolls archaeologist Yigael Yadin mentions that three Bar Kokhba documents he and his team found in the Cave of Letters are written in Mishnaic Hebrew and that it was Simon bar Kokhba who revived Hebrew and made it the official language of the state during the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135). Yadin also notes

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3296-681: The Hasmonean dynasty . Later, the Romans ended their independence, making Herod the Great their governor. A revolt against the Romans led to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and the second Bar Kokhba revolt in 132–135 led to a purge and expulsion of the Jewish population of Judea, the establishment of a new province of Syria Palaestina , and the rebuilding of Jerusalem as

3399-540: The Masoretic Text (𝕸) was transmitted in manuscript form and underwent redaction in the Second Temple period, but its earliest portions (parts of Amos , Isaiah , Hosea and Micah ) can be dated to the late 8th to early 7th centuries BCE. Biblical Hebrew has several different writing systems . From around the 12th century BCE until the 6th century BCE, writers employed the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet . This

3502-521: The Salishan languages , have adopted the IPA letter ⟨ʔ⟩ into their orthographies. In some of them, it occurs as a casing pair , ⟨Ɂ⟩ and ⟨ɂ⟩ . The digit ⟨7⟩ or a question mark is sometimes substituted for ⟨ʔ⟩ , and is preferred in languages such as Squamish . SENĆOŦEN  – whose alphabet is mostly unique from other Salish languages – contrastly uses

3605-457: The Siloam inscription ), and generally also includes later vocalization traditions for the Hebrew Bible's consonantal text, most commonly the early medieval Tiberian vocalization. The archeological record for the prehistory of Biblical Hebrew is far more complete than the record of Biblical Hebrew itself. Early Northwest Semitic (ENWS) materials are attested from 2350 BCE to 1200 BCE,

3708-544: The comma ⟨,⟩ to represent the glottal stop, though it is optional. In 2015, two women in the Northwest Territories challenged the territorial government over its refusal to permit them to use the letter ⟨ʔ⟩ in their daughters' names: Sahaiʔa , a Chipewyan name, and Sakaeʔah , a Slavey name (the two names are actually cognates ). The territory argued that territorial and federal identity documents were unable to accommodate

3811-563: The fifth century . The language of the Hebrew Bible reflects various stages of the Hebrew language in its consonantal skeleton , as well as a vocalization system which was added in the Middle Ages by the Masoretes . There is also some evidence of regional dialectal variation, including differences between Biblical Hebrew as spoken in the northern Kingdom of Israel and in the southern Kingdom of Judah . The consonantal text called

3914-752: The 10th century BCE do not indicate matres lectiones in the middle or the end of a word, for example לפנ and ז for later לפני and זה , similarly to the Hebrew Gezer Calendar , which has for instance שערמ for שעורים and possibly ירח for ירחו . Matres lectionis were later added word-finally, for instance the Mesha inscription has בללה, בנתי for later בלילה, בניתי ; however at this stage they were not yet used word-medially, compare Siloam inscription זדה versus אש (for later איש ). The relative terms defective and full / plene are used to refer to alternative spellings of

4017-547: The 10th century BCE. The 15 cm x 16.5 cm (5.9 in x 6.5 in) trapezoid pottery sherd ( ostracon ) has five lines of text written in ink in the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (the old form which predates both the Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets). The tablet is written from left to right, suggesting that Hebrew writing was still in the formative stage. The Israelite tribes who settled in

4120-537: The 12th century BCE, reflecting the language's twenty-two consonantal phonemes. The 22 letters of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet numbered less than the consonant phonemes of ancient Biblical Hebrew; in particular, the letters ⟨ ח, ע, ש ⟩ could each mark two different phonemes. After a sound shift the letters ח , ע could only mark one phoneme, but (except in Samaritan Hebrew) ש still marked two. The old Babylonian vocalization system wrote

4223-515: The 7th century BCE, and most likely occurred after the loss of Hebrew /χ, ʁ/ c. 200 BCE. It is known to have occurred in Hebrew by the 2nd century CE. After a certain point this alternation became contrastive in word-medial and final position (though bearing low functional load ), but in word-initial position they remained allophonic. This is evidenced both by the Tiberian vocalization's consistent use of word-initial spirants after

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4326-602: The Canaanite languages the shifts */ð/ > /z/ , */θʼ/ and */ɬʼ/ > /sʼ/ , widespread reduction of diphthongs, and full assimilation of non-final /n/ to the following consonant if word final, i.e. בת /bat/ from *bant. There is also evidence of a rule of assimilation of /j/ to the following coronal consonant in pre-tonic position, shared by Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic. Typical Canaanite words in Hebrew include: גג "roof" שלחן "table" חלון "window" ישן "old (thing)" זקן "old (person)" and גרש "expel". Morphological Canaanite features in Hebrew include

4429-841: The Greek alphabet transcription of the Hebrew biblical text contained in the Secunda (3rd century CE, likely a copy of a preexisting text from before 100 BCE ). In the 7th and 8th centuries CE various systems of vocalic notation were developed to indicate vowels in the biblical text. The most prominent, best preserved, and the only system still in use, is the Tiberian vocalization system, created by scholars known as Masoretes around 850 CE. There are also various extant manuscripts making use of less common vocalization systems ( Babylonian and Palestinian ), known as superlinear vocalizations because their vocalization marks are placed above

4532-542: The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls . Some, but not all, are retained in Modern Hebrew . For the expression of possession, Mishnaic Hebrew mostly replaces the construct state with analytic constructions involving של 'of'. Mishnaic Hebrew lacks the waw-consecutive . The past is expressed by using the same form as in Modern Hebrew. For example, Pirqe Avoth 1:1: משה קיבל תורה מסיני "Moses received

4635-733: The Israelites established a unified kingdom in Canaan at the beginning of the first millennium BCE, which later split into the kingdom of Israel in the north and the kingdom of Judah in the south after a disputed succession. In 722 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed Israel and some members of the upper class escaped to Judah. In 586 BCE, the Neo-Babylonian Empire destroyed Judah . The Judahite upper classes were exiled and Solomon's Temple

4738-552: The Mishnah and Baraitot in Aramaic. Nevertheless, Hebrew survived as a liturgical and literary language in the form of later Amoraic Hebrew , which sometimes occurs in the Gemara text. There is general agreement that two main periods of Rabbinical Hebrew (RH) can be distinguished. The first, which lasted until the close of the Tannaitic era (around the year 200), is characterized by RH as a spoken language gradually developing into

4841-778: The Near East, and a derivation from the root עבר ‎ "to pass", alluding to crossing over the Jordan River. Jews also began referring to Hebrew as לשון הקדש ‎ "the Holy Tongue" in Mishnaic Hebrew. The term Classical Hebrew may include all pre-medieval dialects of Hebrew, including Mishnaic Hebrew, or it may be limited to Hebrew contemporaneous with the Hebrew Bible. The term Biblical Hebrew refers to pre-Mishnaic dialects (sometimes excluding Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew). The term Biblical Hebrew may or may not include extra-biblical texts, such as inscriptions (e.g.

4944-483: The Paleo-Hebrew script, while the later books were written directly in the later Assyrian script. Some Qumran texts written in the Assyrian script write the tetragrammaton and some other divine names in Paleo-Hebrew, and this practice is also found in several Jewish-Greek biblical translations. While spoken Hebrew continued to evolve into Mishnaic Hebrew , A number of regional "book-hand" styles were put into use for

5047-542: The Phoenician script were "a curving to the left of the downstrokes in the "long-legged" letter-signs... the consistent use of a Waw with a concave top, [and an] x-shaped Taw." The oldest inscriptions in Paleo-Hebrew script are dated to around the middle of the 9th century BCE, the most famous being the Mesha Stele in the Moabite language (which might be considered a dialect of Hebrew). The ancient Hebrew script

5150-557: The Proto-Semitic sibilant *s 1 , transcribed with šin and traditionally reconstructed as * /ʃ/ , had been originally * /s/ while another sibilant *s 3 , transcribed with sameḵ and traditionally reconstructed as /s/ , had been initially /ts/ ; later on, a push-type chain shift changed *s 3 /ts/ to /s/ and pushed s 1 /s/ to /ʃ/ in many dialects (e.g. Gileadite ) but not others (e.g. Ephraimite), where *s 1 and *s 3 merged into /s/ . Hebrew, as spoken in

5253-487: The Qumran tradition showing the most liberal use of vowel letters. The Masoretic text mostly uses vowel letters for long vowels, showing the tendency to mark all long vowels except for word-internal /aː/ . In the Qumran tradition, back vowels are usually represented by ⟨ ו ⟩ whether short or long. ⟨ י ⟩ is generally used for both long [iː] and [eː] ( אבילים , מית ), and final [iː]

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5356-508: The Qumran type. Presumably, the vowels of Biblical Hebrew were not indicated in the original text, but various sources attest to them at various stages of development. Greek and Latin transcriptions of words from the biblical text provide early evidence of the nature of Biblical Hebrew vowels. In particular, there is evidence from the rendering of proper nouns in the Koine Greek Septuagint (3rd–2nd centuries BCE ) and

5459-486: The Samaritan tradition, with vowels absent in some traditions color-coded. The following sections present the vowel changes that Biblical Hebrew underwent, in approximate chronological order. Proto-Semitic is the ancestral language of all the Semitic languages , and in traditional reconstructions possessed 29 consonants; 6 monophthong vowels, consisting of three qualities and two lengths, */a aː i iː u uː/ , in which

5562-582: The Southern Mainland Argyll dialects of Scottish Gaelic . In such a dialect, the standard Gaelic phrase Tha Gàidhlig agam ("I speak Gaelic"), would be rendered Tha Gàidhlig a'am . In the Nawdm language of Ghana, the glottal stop is written ɦ , capital Ĥ . In English, the glottal stop occurs as an open juncture (for example, between the vowel sounds in uh-oh! , ) and allophonically in t-glottalization . In British English ,

5665-538: The Tiberian system; for instance, the Sephardic tradition's distinction between qamatz gadol and qatan is likely pre-Tiberian. However, the only orthographic system used to mark vowels is the Tiberian vocalization. The phonology as reconstructed for Biblical Hebrew is as follows: The phonetic nature of some Biblical Hebrew consonants is disputed. The so-called "emphatics" were likely pharyngealized , but possibly velarized. The pharyngealization of emphatic consonants

5768-501: The Tiberian tradition /ħ ʕ h ʔ r/ cannot be geminate; historically first /r ʔ/ degeminated, followed by /ʕ/ , /h/ , and finally /ħ/ , as evidenced by changes in the quality of the preceding vowel. The vowel system of Hebrew has changed considerably over time. The following vowels are those reconstructed for the earliest stage of Hebrew, those attested by the Secunda, those of the various vocalization traditions ( Tiberian and varieties of Babylonian and Palestinian ), and those of

5871-413: The Torah from Sinai". Continuous past is expressed using the past tense of "to be" + participle, unlike Biblical Hebrew. For example, Pirqe Avoth 1:2: הוא היה אומר "He often said". Present is expressed using the same form as in Modern Hebrew, by using the participle ( בינוני ). For example, Pirqe Avoth 1:2 על שלושה דברים העולם עומד "The world is sustained by three things", lit. "On three things

5974-458: The agreement morphemes may have changed under the influence of Aramaic. Also, some surviving manuscripts of the Mishna confuse guttural consonants, especially ʾaleph ( א ‎) (a glottal stop ) and ʿayin ( ע ‎) (a voiced pharyngeal fricative ). That could be a sign that they were pronounced the same way in Mishnaic Hebrew. Consonants Vowels Mishnaic Hebrew displays various changes from Biblical Hebrew, some appearing already in

6077-399: The character. The women registered the names with hyphens instead of the ⟨ʔ⟩ , while continuing to challenge the policy. In the Crow language , the glottal stop is written as a question mark ⟨?⟩ . The only instance of the glottal stop in Crow is as a question marker morpheme at the end of a sentence. Use of the glottal stop is a distinct characteristic of

6180-410: The classical period is the spirantization of post-vocalic stops (b, g, d, p, t, k), which it has in common with Aramaic. A new characteristic is that final /m/ is often replaced with final /n/ in the Mishna (see Bava Kama 1:4, " מועדין "), but only in agreement morphemes. Perhaps the final nasal consonant in the morphemes was not pronounced, and the vowel previous to it was nasalized. Alternatively,

6283-427: The common language in the north, in Galilee and Samaria . Hebrew remained in use in Judah, but the returning exiles brought back Aramaic influence, and Aramaic was used for communicating with other ethnic groups during the Persian period. Alexander the Great conquered the province in 332 BCE, beginning the period of Hellenistic (Greek) domination. During the Hellenistic period , Judea became independent under

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6386-448: The completion of the Mishnah. These include the halakhic midrashim ( Sifra , Sifre , Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael etc.) and the expanded collection of Mishnah-related material known as the Tosefta . The Talmud contains excerpts from these works, as well as further Tannaitic material not attested elsewhere; the generic term for these passages is baraitot . The language of all these works is very similar to Mishnaic Hebrew. Mishnaic Hebrew

6489-403: The dry environment of Egypt, and the survival of the Hebrew Bible may be attributed to scribal determination in preserving the text through copying. No manuscript of the Hebrew Bible dates to before 400 BCE, although two silver rolls (the Ketef Hinnom scrolls ) from the seventh or sixth century BCE show a version of the Priestly Blessing . Vowel and cantillation marks were added to

6592-619: The early Monarchic Period . This stage is also known as Old Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew, and is the oldest stratum of Biblical Hebrew. The oldest known artifacts of Archaic Biblical Hebrew are various sections of the Tanakh , including the Song of Moses ( Exodus 15) and the Song of Deborah ( Judges 5). Biblical poetry uses a number of distinct lexical items, for example חזה for prose ראה 'see', כביר for גדול 'great'. Some have cognates in other Northwest Semitic languages, for example פעל 'do' and חָרוּץ 'gold' which are common in Canaanite and Ugaritic. Grammatical differences include

6695-472: The effect of the law of attenuation whereby /a/ in closed unstressed syllables became /i/ . All of these systems together are used to reconstruct the original vocalization of Biblical Hebrew. At an early stage, in documents written in the paleo-Hebrew script, words were divided by short vertical lines and later by dots, as reflected by the Mesha Stone, the Siloam inscription, the Ophel inscription, and paleo-Hebrew script documents from Qumran. Word division

6798-408: The end of a word, the last vowel can be written with a circumflex accent (known as the pakupyâ ) if both a stress and a glottal stop occur in the final vowel (e.g. basâ , "wet") or a grave accent (known as the paiwà ) if the glottal stop occurs at the final vowel, but the stress occurs at the penultimate syllable (e.g. batà , "child"). Some Canadian indigenous languages , especially some of

6901-473: The end of the Bronze Age . The Northwest Semitic languages, including Hebrew, differentiated noticeably during the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE), although in its earliest stages Biblical Hebrew was not highly differentiated from Ugaritic and the Canaanite of the Amarna letters . Hebrew developed during the latter half of the second millennium BCE between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea , an area known as Canaan . The Deuteronomic history says

7004-412: The first millennium BCE ( יין = /ˈjajin/ ). The word play in Amos 8 :1–2 כְּלוּב קַ֫יִץ... בָּא הַקֵּץ may reflect this: given that Amos was addressing the population of the Northern Kingdom, the vocalization *קֵיץ would be more forceful. Other possible Northern features include use of שֶ- 'who, that', forms like דֵעָה 'to know' rather than דַעַת and infinitives of certain verbs of

7107-567: The form עֲשוֹ 'to do' rather than עֲשוֹת . The Samaria ostraca also show שת for standard שנה 'year', as in Aramaic. The guttural phonemes /ħ ʕ h ʔ/ merged over time in some dialects. This was found in Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew, but Jerome (d. 420) attested to the existence of contemporaneous Hebrew speakers who still distinguished pharyngeals. Samaritan Hebrew also shows a general attrition of these phonemes, though /ʕ ħ/ are occasionally preserved as [ʕ] . The earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, found at Khirbet Qeiyafa , dates to

7210-461: The glottal stop has no consistent symbolization. In most cases, however, a word that begins with a vowel-letter (e.g. Tagalog aso , "dog") is always pronounced with an unrepresented glottal stop before that vowel (as in Modern German and Hausa ). Some orthographies use a hyphen instead of the reverse apostrophe if the glottal stop occurs in the middle of the word (e.g. Tagalog pag-ibig , "love"; or Visayan gabi-i , "night"). If it occurs in

7313-405: The glottal stop in the histories of such languages as Danish (see stød ), Cantonese and Thai . In many languages, the unstressed intervocalic allophone of the glottal stop is a creaky-voiced glottal approximant . It is known to be contrastive in only one language, Gimi , in which it is the voiced equivalent of the stop. . In some languages that normally maintain the flow of vowels fluid,

7416-486: The glottal stop is most familiar in the Cockney pronunciation of "butter" as "bu'er". Geordie English often uses glottal stops for t, k, and p, and has a unique form of glottalization. Additionally, there is the glottal stop as a null onset for English; in other words, it is the non-phonemic glottal stop occurring before isolated or initial vowels. Often a glottal stop happens at the beginning of vowel phonation after

7519-484: The glottal stop is the saltillo ⟨Ꞌ ꞌ⟩ , used in languages such as Tlapanec and Rapa Nui . Other scripts also have letters used for representing the glottal stop, such as the Hebrew letter aleph ⟨ א ‎⟩ and the Cyrillic letter palochka ⟨Ӏ⟩ , used in several Caucasian languages . The Arabic script uses hamza ⟨ ء ⟩ , which can appear both as

7622-612: The land of Israel used a late form of the Proto-Sinaitic Alphabet (known as Proto-Canaanite when found in Israel) around the 12th century BCE, which developed into Early Phoenician and Early Paleo-Hebrew as found in the Gezer calendar ( c.  10th century BCE ). This script developed into the Paleo-Hebrew script in the 10th or 9th centuries BCE. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet's main differences from

7725-464: The language יהודית ‎ "Judaean, Judahite" In the Hellenistic period , Greek writings use the names Hebraios , Hebraïsti and in Mishnaic Hebrew we find עברית ‎ 'Hebrew' and לשון עברית ‎ "Hebrew language". The origin of this term is obscure; suggested origins include the biblical Eber , the ethnonyms ʿApiru , Ḫabiru, and Ḫapiru found in sources from Egypt and

7828-533: The letters. In addition, the Samaritan reading tradition is independent of these systems and was occasionally notated with a separate vocalization system. These systems often record vowels at different stages of historical development; for example, the name of the Judge Samson is recorded in Greek as Σαμψών Sampsōn with the first vowel as /a/ , while Tiberian שִמְשוֹן /ʃimʃon/ with /i/ shows

7931-430: The long vowels occurred only in open syllables; and two diphthongs */aj aw/ . The stress system of Proto-Semitic is unknown but it is commonly described as being much like the system of Classical Latin or the modern pronunciation of Classical Arabic : If the penultimate (second last) syllable is light (has a short vowel followed by a single consonant), stress goes on the antepenult (third to last); otherwise, it goes on

8034-460: The masculine plural marker -ם , first person singular pronoun אנכי , interrogative pronoun מי , definite article ה- (appearing in the first millennium BCE), and third person plural feminine verbal marker -ת . Biblical Hebrew as preserved in the Hebrew Bible is composed of multiple linguistic layers. The consonantal skeleton of the text is the most ancient, while the cantillation and modern vocalization are later additions reflecting

8137-676: The modern Samaritan Hebrew reading tradition. The vowel system of Biblical Hebrew changed over time and is reflected differently in the ancient Greek and Latin transcriptions, medieval vocalization systems, and modern reading traditions. Biblical Hebrew had a typical Semitic morphology with nonconcatenative morphology , arranging Semitic roots into patterns to form words. Biblical Hebrew distinguished two genders (masculine, feminine), three numbers (singular, plural, and uncommonly, dual). Verbs were marked for voice and mood , and had two conjugations which may have indicated aspect and/or tense (a matter of debate). The tense or aspect of verbs

8240-566: The more southern Canaanite dialects (like Hebrew) that the Egyptians were in contact with, so that there is no contradiction within this argument. Originally, the Hebrew letters ⟨ ח ⟩ and ⟨ ע ⟩ each represented two possible phonemes, uvular and pharyngeal, with the distinction unmarked in Hebrew orthography. However the uvular phonemes /χ/ ח and /ʁ/ ע merged with their pharyngeal counterparts /ħ/ ח and /ʕ/ ע respectively c. 200 BCE. This

8343-454: The musical motifs used in formal recitation of the text. While the Babylonian and Palestinian reading traditions are extinct, various other systems of pronunciation have evolved over time, notably the Yemenite , Sephardi , Ashkenazi , and Samaritan traditions. Modern Hebrew pronunciation is also used by some to read biblical texts. The modern reading traditions do not stem solely from

8446-509: The northern Kingdom of Israel, known as Israelian Hebrew , shows phonological, lexical, and grammatical differences from southern dialects. The northern dialect spoken around Samaria shows a more frequent simplification of /aj/ into /eː/ as attested by the Samaria ostraca (8th century BCE), e.g. ין (= /jeːn/ < */jajn/ 'wine'), while the southern or Judean dialect instead adds in an epenthetic vowel /i/ , added halfway through

8549-553: The official language of Israel . Currently, Classical Hebrew is generally taught in public schools in Israel and Biblical Hebrew forms are sometimes used in Modern Hebrew literature, much as archaic and biblical constructions are used in Modern English literature. Since Modern Hebrew contains many biblical elements, Biblical Hebrew is fairly intelligible to Modern Hebrew speakers. The primary source of Biblical Hebrew material

8652-459: The older consonantal layer of the Bible between 600 CE and the beginning of the 10th century. The scholars who preserved the pronunciation of the Bibles were known as the Masoretes . The most well-preserved system that was developed, and the only one still in religious use, is the Tiberian vocalization, but both Babylonian and Palestinian vocalizations are also attested. The Palestinian system

8755-472: The order that was given by Bar Kokhba, who wanted to revive the Hebrew language and make it the official language of the state." However, less than a century after the publication of the Mishnah, Hebrew began to fall into disuse as a spoken language. The Gemara ( גמרא , circa 500 in Lower Mesopotamia ), as well as the earlier Jerusalem Talmud published between 350 and 400, generally comment on

8858-543: The penult. Glottal stop The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages , produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis . The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ ʔ ⟩. As a result of the obstruction of the airflow in the glottis, the glottal vibration either stops or becomes irregular with

8961-460: The proto-Semitic phoneme */θ/ , which shifted to /ʃ/ in most dialects of Hebrew, may have been retained in the Hebrew of the Transjordan (however, there is evidence that שִׁבֹּ֤לֶת 's Proto-Semitic ancestor had initial consonant š (whence Hebrew /ʃ/ ), contradicting this theory; for example, שִׁבֹּ֤לֶת 's proto-Semitic ancestor has been reconstructed as * š u(n)bul-at- . ); or that

9064-448: The purpose of Torah manuscripts and occasionally other literary works, distinct from the calligraphic styles used mainly for private purposes. The Mizrahi and Ashkenazi book-hand styles were later adapted to printed fonts after the invention of the printing press. The modern Hebrew alphabet , also known as the Assyrian or Square script, appears a descendant of the Aramaic alphabet. The Phoenician script had dropped five characters by

9167-417: The roman colonia of Aelia Capitolina . Hebrew after the Second Temple period evolved into Mishnaic Hebrew, which ceased being spoken and developed into a literary language around 200 CE. Hebrew continued to be used as a literary and liturgical language in the form of Medieval Hebrew . The revival of the Hebrew language as a vernacular began in the 19th century, culminating in Modern Hebrew becoming

9270-521: The rule in Mishnaic Hebrew. In all Jewish reading traditions /ɬ/ and /s/ have merged completely; however in Samaritan Hebrew /ɬ/ has instead merged with /ʃ/ . Allophonic spirantization of /b ɡ d k p t/ to [v ɣ ð x f θ] (known as begadkefat spirantization) developed sometime during the lifetime of Biblical Hebrew under the influence of Aramaic. This probably happened after the original Old Aramaic phonemes /θ, ð/ disappeared in

9373-517: The second millennium BCE, but disappear almost totally afterwards. Mimation is absent in singular nouns, but is often retained in the plural, as in Hebrew. The Northwest Semitic languages formed a dialect continuum in the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE), with Phoenician and Aramaic on each extreme. Hebrew is classed with Phoenician in the Canaanite subgroup, which also includes Ammonite , Edomite , and Moabite . Moabite might be considered

9476-485: The time. They initially indicated only consonants, but certain letters, known by the Latin term matres lectionis , became increasingly used to mark vowels . In the Middle Ages, various systems of diacritics were developed to mark the vowels in Hebrew manuscripts; of these, only the Tiberian vocalization is still widely used. Biblical Hebrew possessed a series of emphatic consonants whose precise articulation

9579-465: The use of זה , זוֹ , and זוּ as relative particles, negative בל , and various differences in verbal and pronominal morphology and syntax. Later pre-exilic Biblical Hebrew (such as is found in prose sections of the Pentateuch, Nevi'im , and some Ketuvim ) is known as 'Biblical Hebrew proper' or 'Standard Biblical Hebrew'. This is dated to the period from the 8th to the 6th century BCE. In contrast to Archaic Hebrew, Standard Biblical Hebrew

9682-509: The world stands". Future can be expressed using עתיד + infinitive. For example, Pirqe Avoth 3:1: ולפני מי אתה עתיד ליתן דין וחשבון . However, unlike Modern Hebrew but like contemporary Aramaic, the present active participle can also express the future. It mostly replaces the imperfect (prefixed) form in that function. The imperfect (prefixed) form, which is used for the future in modern Hebrew, expresses an imperative (order), volition or similar meanings in Mishnaic Hebrew (the prefixed form

9785-484: Was also attested in later Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic (see Eruvin 53b). In Samaritan Hebrew, /ʔ ħ h ʕ/ have generally all merged, either into /ʔ/ , a glide /w/ or /j/ , or by vanishing completely (often creating a long vowel), except that original /ʕ ħ/ sometimes have reflex /ʕ/ before /a ɒ/ . Geminate consonants are phonemically contrastive in Biblical Hebrew. In the Secunda /w j z/ are never geminate. In

9888-587: Was also influenced by the conjunction ו , in the so-called waw-consecutive construction. Unlike modern Hebrew, the default word order for biblical Hebrew was verb–subject–object , and verbs were inflected for the number, gender, and person of their subject. Pronominal suffixes could be appended to verbs (to indicate object ) or nouns (to indicate possession ), and nouns had special construct states for use in possessive constructions. The earliest written sources refer to Biblical Hebrew as שפת כנען ‎ "the language of Canaan". The Hebrew Bible also calls

9991-901: Was destroyed. Later, the Achaemenid Empire made Judah a province, Yehud Medinata , and permitted the Judahite exiles to return and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem . According to the Gemara , Hebrew of this period was similar to Imperial Aramaic ; Hanina bar Hama said that God sent the exiled Jews to Babylon because "[the Babylonian] language is akin to the Leshon Hakodesh " in the Talmud ( Pesahim 87b ). Aramaic became

10094-591: Was in continuous use until the early 6th century BCE, the end of the First Temple period. In the Second Temple Period the Paleo-Hebrew script gradually fell into disuse, and was completely abandoned among the Jews after the failed Bar Kochba revolt . The Samaritans retained the ancient Hebrew alphabet, which evolved into the modern Samaritan alphabet . By the end of the First Temple period

10197-519: Was not used in Phoenician inscriptions; however, there is no direct evidence for biblical texts being written without word division, as suggested by Nahmanides in his introduction to the Torah. Word division using spaces was commonly used from the beginning of the 7th century BCE for documents in the Aramaic script. In addition to marking vowels, the Tiberian system also uses cantillation marks, which serve to mark word stress, semantic structure, and

10300-481: Was preserved mainly in piyyutim , which contain biblical quotations. Biblical Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language from the Canaanite subgroup . As Biblical Hebrew evolved from the Proto-Semitic language it underwent a number of consonantal mergers parallel with those in other Canaanite languages. There is no evidence that these mergers occurred after the adaptation of the Hebrew alphabet. As

10403-557: Was retained by the Samaritans , who use the descendent Samaritan script to this day. However, the Imperial Aramaic alphabet gradually displaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet after the Babylonian captivity , and it became the source for the current Hebrew alphabet . These scripts lack letters to represent all of the sounds of Biblical Hebrew, although these sounds are reflected in Greek and Latin transcriptions/translations of

10506-510: Was seen as a way to emphasize a word. Today, in British, American and other varieties of English, it is increasingly used not only to emphasize but also simply to separate two words, especially when the first word ends in a glottal stop. In many languages that do not allow a sequence of vowels, such as Persian , the glottal stop may be used epenthetically to prevent such a hiatus . There are intricate interactions between falling tone and

10609-473: Was used in Koine Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts. The Hebrew language is attested in inscriptions from about the 10th century BCE, when it was almost identical to Phoenician and other Canaanite languages, and spoken Hebrew persisted through and beyond the Second Temple period , which ended in the siege of Jerusalem (70 CE) . It eventually developed into Mishnaic Hebrew, which was spoken until

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