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Hebrew

Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language that belongs to the Afro-asiatic family of languages. It is one of the Canaanite dialects and it has been spoken since the 2^nd millennium BC in the Levant region. Texts from this period that were discovered in Jordan and Lebanon reveal great similarity between Hebrew and the Phoenician and Moabite languages.

Most of the Tanakh books, Mishnah, as well as the Apocrypha and the Dead Sea Scrolls were written in Hebrew. For a long period in history, Hebrew was not spoken, but was still considered the main writing language of the Jews. Until the 19^th century and the early days of the Zionist movement, Hebrew was primarily used for religious purposes, but also for writing contents in such fields, as philosophy, literature, science and medicine. The status of the Hebrew language among Jews was similar to the status of Latin among Christians in Western Europe. From the end of the 18^th century, with the growth of the Jewish Enlightenment movement in Germany and Eastern Europe, Hebrew started gaining momentum and during the course of the 19^th century, secular Jewish population started using the Hebrew language on a constant basis.

Currently, there are about 9 million Israeli Hebrew speakers, while the majority live in Israel. Many Israeli citizens, who arrived as immigrants, speak Hebrew as their second language and those, who were born in Israel to parents from other countries usually also speak such languages as Russian, Polish, French, Spanish and many others. Hebrew is the official language of Israel (along with Arabic).

Following the European tradition that originated with the establishment of the French Academy, Israel also has an official institution that dictates rules and standards of the Hebrew language. The Academy of the Hebrew Language operates by virtue of the law, although the actual impact of this institution is quite limited. It is mainly occupied with defining new words, terminology and general rules of spelling, grammar and syntax that obligate all government agencies and state institutions, as well as the Israeli education system.