Courtney Morgan, age 15, of Cleveland, Ohio, for her question:
HOW OLD IS THE HEBREW LANGUAGE?
Hebrew is one of the world's oldest living languages. The ancient Israelites who lived in Palestine in Bible times spoke and wrote in Hebrew. The Bible itself is the greatest product of Hebrew literature.
The Hebrew language has probably been spoken since about 2000 B.C.
Hebrew is a dialect of Canaanitic, a branch of the Semitic languages. It resembles the languages of the ancient Edomites, Moabites and Phoenicians.
In sound, Hebrew lies about halfway between Arabic and Aramaic. It lacks some of the original Semitic sounds that Arabic has kept.
Hebrew may be spoken with an Ashkenazic or Germanic accent, or with a Sephardic or Spanish one. The main differences occur in the pronunciation of certain vowels and in accenting words. Many scholars consider Sephardic an older and more authentic pronunciation. It is the pronunciation used in Israel today.
The first important period in the development of Hebrew came before the Jews were taken into exile in Babylonia in 587 B.C. Much of the Hebrew Bible was written during that time. Some words and forms were borrowed from the Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian and Aramaic languages.
Further developments took place after the exile, when the Hebrew Bible and Apocrypha were completed. During this period, Aramaic became the spoken language of the people, and writers started using Aramaic words in literature.
The period from about 300 B.C. to A.D. 500 was a highly creative one for the Hebrew language. A vast collection of oral traditions and comments on the Bible were compiled as the Talmud. The Talmud became, next to the Bible, the most important authoritative source for traditional Judaism.
Many words in the Talmud, especially technical terms, were borrowed from Greek and Latin.
The 800 year period from 300 B.C. to A.D. 500, often called the Talmudic period, saw Jews leave Palestine in great numbers and settle in Europe, Asia and Africa. They kept the Hebrew language alive through religious writings and prayers. But the languages of the countries in which the Jews lived affected their own tongue. As a result, many new words became part of the Hebrew vocabulary.
During the Middle Ages, Hebrew was greatly influenced by Arabic. Jewish scholars translated many scientific works from the Arabic and borrowed Arabic words and sentence structures.
Modern Hebrew started to develop around 1850. It combines the poetry and beauty of Biblical Hebrew with the concise style of the Mishnah, one of the sections of the Talmud. It also includes terms coined by Jewish philosophers and translators of the Middle Ages.
Included in modern Hebrew are the new forms invented by the Hebrew Academy in Israel on the basis of old models.
The Hebrew alphabet has 22 basic consonants.