Hebrew

Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic family that originated in the ancient Land of Israel. It was the language of the Hebrew Bible and later of Judean and Mishnaic communities. After a period of limited spoken use, Hebrew was revived as a living language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, largely through the work of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and others associated with the Zionist movement. Today, Hebrew is the official language of the State of Israel alongside Arabic and is spoken by Jewish, Arab, and other communities worldwide. It is used in education, government, media, literature, and everyday life, and is learned as a second language by many around the world.

The language is written with the Hebrew alphabet, consisting of 22 consonants. In ordinary writing, vowels are typically not indicated; vowel sounds may be shown with diacritics called niqqum in religious, educational, or liturgical texts, or inferred from context and morphology in everyday use. Hebrew is written from right to left and employs final letter forms for certain characters when they appear at the end of a word. The alphabet has been adapted to accommodate modern terminology and loanwords while maintaining historical roots.

Hebrew features a root-and-pattern morphology based on triconsonantal roots. Verbs are organized into stems, or binyanim, that express different voices and aspects. Modern Hebrew verbs are conjugated for person, number, and gender across past, present, and future tenses. Nouns have gender (masculine or feminine) and number, with adjectives agreeing in gender and number. The definite article ha- prefixes nouns, and possession can be expressed by suffixed pronouns or the construct state.

In modern usage, Hebrew has a standardized literary form regulated by linguistic authorities and a vibrant spoken form used in daily communication, media, and education.