Modern Hebrew

Modern Hebrew (Hebrew: עברית ישראלית‎ Ivrit Yisra'elit), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Modern Israeli Hebrew, is the language spoken in Israel and in some Jewish communities worldwide, from the early 20th century to the present.

Modern Hebrew was developed in the late 19th century and early 20th century in a process often referred to as the "Revival of the Hebrew language".

Modern Hebrew is spoken nowadays by about seven million people—most of them citizens of Israel, or Israeli immigrants living around the world, of which three million are native speakers of Modern Israeli Hebrew, two million are new immigrants, one million are Israeli Arabs and half a million are Israelis or non-Israelis who live abroad, mostly in Jewish communities around the world. In addition, Modern Hebrew is also used by about half a million Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip who mostly use the language for communication with Israeli officials.

Modern Hebrew is, together with Modern Standard Arabic, the first official language of the modern state of Israel, and even before the state's establishment it was one of the official languages of the British Mandate for Palestine.

The organization which officially investigates and directs the development of the Modern Hebrew language, under the law of the State of Israel, is the Academy of the Hebrew Language.

Influences

Nowadays many families have been using Modern Hebrew as the native language for three generations. The main generational differences are in the vocabulary - a difference which is apparent in many spoken languages.

Modern Hebrew has been developing in a multi-lingual environment. Half of the Modern Israeli Hebrew speakers are not native speakers and also the Modern Hebrew native speakers usually learn at least one more foreign language. In this situation, Modern Hebrew is affected intensively by many foreign languages - through the years Modern Israeli Hebrew has borrowed many words from Aramaic, Yiddish, Ladino, Arabic (mainly spoken Judeo-Arabic and various Levantine Arabic dialects), German, Latin, Greek, Polish, Russian, English and other languages.

According to the Academy of the Hebrew Language, in the 1880s (the time of the beginning of the Zionist movement and the Hebrew revival) there were mainly three groups of Hebrew regional accents: Ashkenazi (Eastern European), Sephardi (Spanish/Portuguese/Italian), and Mizrahi (Middle Eastern - largely used by Israelis of Iraqi, Moroccan, Tunisian, Egyptian, Syrian, and Yemeni heritage). Over time features of these systems of pronunciation merged, forming a Koiné language, and today variation in pronunciation is less dramatic.

Classification

The vast majority of scholars see Modern Hebrew as a direct continuation of Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew, though they concede that it has acquired some European vocabulary and syntactical features, in much the same way as Modern Standard Arabic^[1] (or even more so, dialects such as Moroccan Arabic). Two dissenting views are as follows:

• Paul Wexler^[2] claims that modern Hebrew is not a Semitic language at all, but a dialect of "Judaeo-Sorbian". He argues that the underlying structure of the language is Slavic, but "re-lexified" to absorb much of the vocabulary and inflectional system of Hebrew in much the same way as a creole. This view forms part of a larger complex of theories, such as that Ashkenazi Jews are predominantly descended from Slavic and Turkic tribes rather than from the ancient Israelites.
• Shlomo Izre'el^[3] focuses on the "emergency" of "Spoken Israeli Hebrew" in terms of a "creation of a new language" and attempts to fit the nativization of this "new linguistic entity" into the "larger continuum of Creole and Creole-like languages" but does not seem to believe at all in any relexification hypotheses, whether from a Slavic or any other linguistic substratum (with references to his own earlier work on the creolization hypothesis (1986)^[4] and the works of Goldenberg (1996)^[5] and Kuzar (2001)^[6]).
• Ghil'ad Zuckermann^[7][8] compromises between Wexler and the majority view: according to him, "Israeli" (his term for Israeli Hebrew) is a Semito-European hybrid language, which is the continuation not only of literary Hebrew but also of Yiddish, as well as Polish, Russian, German, English, Ladino, Arabic and other languages spoken by Hebrew revivalists.^[9][10] Thus, "Yiddish is a primary contributor to Israeli Hebrew because it was the mother tongue of the vast majority of revivalists and first pioneers in Eretz Yisrael at the crucial period of the beginning of Israeli Hebrew".^[11] According to Zuckermann, although the revivalists wished to speak Hebrew, with Semitic grammar and pronunciation, they could not avoid the Ashkenazi mindset arising from their European background. He argues that their attempt to deny their European roots, negate diasporism and avoid hybridity (as reflected in Yiddish) failed. "Had the revivalists been Arabic-speaking or Berber-speaking Jews (e.g. from Morocco), Israeli Hebrew would have been a totally different language – both genetically and typologically, much more Semitic. The impact of the founder population on Israeli Hebrew is incomparable with that of later immigrants."^[12]

So far, neither view has gained significant acceptance among mainstream linguists, and both have been criticized by some as being based less on linguistic evidence than post- or anti-Zionist political motivations.^[13] However, some linguists, for example American Yiddish scholar Dovid Katz, have employed Zuckermann's glottonym "Israeli" and accept his notion of hybridity. Few would dispute that Hebrew has acquired some European features as a result of having been learned by immigrants as a second language at a crucial formative stage. The identity of the European substrate/adstrate has varied: in the time of the Mandate and the early State, the principal contributor was Yiddish, while today it is American English. There has also been some influence, on vocabulary rather than structure, from Arabic, both in the form of Palestinian Arabic and, during the large scale immigrations of Mizrahi Jews during the 1950-60s, the Yemenite and North African dialects. Some Russian influence may also be observed, both during the founding period and as a result of the wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union following its collapse in 1991.

Phonology

Consonants

The Hebrew word for consonants is ‘itsurim (עיצורים). The following table lists the Hebrew consonants and their pronunciation in IPA transcription:

Changes in Resh pronunciation

In Hebrew, the classical pronunciation associated with the consonant ר rêš was flapped [ɾ], and was grammatically treated as an ungeminable phoneme of the language. In most dialects of Hebrew among the Jewish diaspora, it remained a flap or a trill [r]. However, in some Ashkenazi dialects as preserved among Jews in northern Europe it was a uvular rhotic, either a trill [ʀ] or a fricative [ʁ]. This was because many (but not all) native dialects of Yiddish were spoken that way, and their liturgical Hebrew carried the same pronunciation. Some Iraqi Jews also pronounce rêš as a guttural, reflecting their dialect of Arabic.

An apparently unrelated uvular rhotic is believed to have appeared in the Tiberian vocalization of Hebrew, where it is believed to have coexisted with additional non-guttural articulations of /r/ depending on circumstances.

Yiddish influence

Though an Ashkenazi Jew in Czarist Russia, the Zionist Eliezer ben Yehuda based his Standard Hebrew on the Sephardic dialect originally spoken in Spain, and therefore recommended an alveolar R. But as the first waves of Jews to resettle in the Holy Land were northern Ashkenazi, they came to speak Standard Hebrew with their preferred uvular articulation as found in Yiddish or modern standard German, and it gradually became the most prestigious pronunciation for the language. The modern State of Israel has Jews whose ancestors came from all over the world, but nearly all of them today speak Hebrew with a uvular R because of its modern prestige and historical elite status.

Israeli Hebrew

Many Jewish immigrants to Israel spoke a variety of Arabic in their countries of origin, and pronounced the Hebrew rhotic as an alveolar trill, identical to Arabic ر rāʾ . Under pressure to assimilate, many of them began pronouncing their Hebrew rhotic as a voiced uvular fricative, often identical to Arabic غ ġayn. However, in modern Sephardic and Mizrahi poetry and folk music, as well as in the standard (or "standardized") Hebrew used in the Israeli media, an alveolar rhotic is sometimes used.

Oriental speakers tend to use an alveolar trill [r] rather than the uvular trill [ʀ], preserve the pharyngeal consonants /ħ/ and (less commonly) /ʕ/ rather than merging them with /χ ʔ/, preserve gemination, and pronounce /e/ in some places where non-Oriental speakers have null (the so-called shva na). There are mixed views on the status of the two accents. On the one hand, prominent Israelis of Sephardic or Oriental origin are admired for the purity of their speech and Yemenite Jews are often employed as newsreaders. On the other hand, the speech of middle-class Ashkenazim is regarded as having a certain Central European sophistication, and many speakers of Mizrahi origin have moved nearer to this version of Standard Hebrew, in some cases even adopting the uvular resh.

The pairs /b/~/v/, /k/~/χ/, and /p/~/f/ were historically allophonic, as a consequence of the phenomenon of spirantization known as begadkefat. In Modern Hebrew, however, all six sounds are sometimes phonemic.

This phonemic divergence might be due to a number of factors: mergers involving formerly distinct sounds (historical pronunciation /w/ of vav merging with fricative bet, becoming /v/, historical pronunciation /q/ of kuf merging with plosive kaf, becoming /k/, and historical pronunciation /ħ/ of het merging with fricative kaf, becoming /x/), loss of consonant gemination, which formerly distinguished the stop members of the pairs from the fricatives when intervocalic, and the introduction of syllable-initial /f/ and non-syllable-initial /p/ and /b/ (see Begadkefat).

Varieties of ayin

The letter Ayin (ע) historically represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative. Most modern Ashkenazi Jews do not differentiate between א and ע; however, many Mizrahi Jews distinguish these phonemes, as well as Jews from any background wishing to speak Hebrew in its pure form. Georgian Jews pronounce it as [qʼ]. Western European Sephardim and Dutch Ashkenazim traditionally pronounce it [ŋ] (like ng in sing) – a pronunciation which can also be found in the Italian tradition and, historically, in south-west Germany. (The remnants of this pronunciation are found throughout the Ashkenazi world, in the name "Yankl" and "Yanki", diminutive forms of Jacob, Heb. יעקב).

Historical sound changes

Standard (non-Oriental) Israeli Hebrew (SIH) has undergone a number of splits and mergers in its development from Biblical Hebrew.^[14]

• BH /b/ had two allophones, [b] and [v]; the [v] allophone has merged with /w/ into SIH /v/
• Whereas BH /w/ has become SIH /v/, the phoneme /w/ has been re-introduced into modern Israeli Hebrew in some loanwords and their derivations (see Hebrew Vav → Vav as consonant)
• BH /k/ had two allophones, [k] and [x]; the [k] allophone has merged with /q/ into SIH /k/, while the [x] allophone has merged with /ħ/ into SIH /χ/
• BH /t/ and /tˤ/ have merged into SIH /t/
• BH /ʕ/ and /ʔ/ have usually merged into SIH /ʔ/, but this distinction may also be upheld in educated speech of many Sephardim and some Ashkenazim
• BH /p/ had two allophones, [p] and [f]; the incorporation of loanwords into Modern Hebrew has probably resulted in a split, so that /p/ and /f/ are separate phonemes.

Dagesh

Hebrew also has dagesh, a phonological process of consonant strengthening that is indicated in pointed texts by a dot placed in the center of a consonant. There are two kinds of strengthenings: light (kal, known also as dagesh lene) and heavy (hazak or dagesh forte). The light version applies to the phonemes /b/ /k/ /p/ (historically, also /ɡ/, /d/ and /t/), causing them to be pronounced as stops rather than fricatives, and operates when the dagesh occurs in the beginning of a word or after a consonant (i.e. a silent shva). The heavy dagesh occurs after vowels and applies to all consonants except gutturals and /r/, originally causing them to be pronounced as geminate (doubled) consonants; it also selects the stop allophone of /b/, /k/, /p/, etc. (In Modern Hebrew, gemination has disappeared, and hence the heavy dagesh has a phonological effect only on /b/ /k/ /p/, affecting them the same as the light dagesh.) Traditional Hebrew grammar distinguishes two sub-categories of the heavy dagesh according to their historical origin: structural heavy (hazak tavniti) and complementing heavy (hazak mashlim). Structural heavy dagesh corresponds to consonant doubling that was inherited from Proto-Semitic, and occurs in certain verb conjugations and noun patterns (mishkalim and binyanim; see Modern Hebrew grammar). Complementing heavy dagesh corresponds to consonant doubling that arose within Hebrew as a result of consonant assimilation, most commonly of an /n/ to a following consonant (e.g. Biblical Hebrew /ʔatˈtaː/ "you (m. sg.)" vs. Classical Arabic /ˈʔanta/).

Vowels

The Hebrew word for vowels is tnu'ot (תְּנוּעוֹת). The orthographic representations for these vowels are called Niqqud. Israeli Hebrew has 5 vowel phonemes, represented by the following Niqqud-signs:

In Biblical Hebrew, each vowel had three forms: short, long and interrupted (chataf). However, there is no audible distinction between the three in modern Israeli Hebrew, except that tsere is often pronounced [eɪ] as in Ashkenazi Hebrew.

Shva

The Niqqud sign "Shva" represents four grammatical entities: resting (nach / נָח), moving (na' / נָע), floating (merahef / מְרַחֵף) and "bleating" or "bellowing" (ga'ya / גַּעְיָּה). In earlier forms of Hebrew, these entities were phonologically and phonetically distinguishable. However, in Modern Hebrew these distinctions are not observed. For example, the (first) Shva Nach in the word קִמַּטְתְ (fem. you crumpled) is pronounced [e̞] ([kiˈmäte̞t]) even though it should be mute, whereas the Shva Na in זְמַן (time), which theoretically should be pronounced, is usually mute ([zmän]). Sometimes the shva is pronounced like a tsere when accented, as in the prefix "ve" meaning "and".

Stress

Hebrew has two frequent kinds of lexical stress, on the last syllable (milrá; מלרע) and on the penultimate syllable (the one preceding the last, mil‘él; מלעיל), of which the first is more frequent. Contrary to the prescribed standard, some words exhibit a stress on the antepenultimate syllable or even further back. This occurs often in loanwords, e.g. פּוֹלִיטִיקָה /poˈlitika/, "politics", and sometimes in native colloquial compounds, e.g. אֵיכְשֶׁהוּ /ˈeχʃehu/,^[15] "somehow"; אֵיפֹשֶׁהוּ /ˈefoʃehu/, "somewhere". Colloquial stress is also often shifted from the last syllable to the penultimate, contrary to the prescribed standard, e.g. כּוֹבַע, normative stress /koˈvaʕ/, colloquial stress /ˈkovaʕ/ "hat"; שׁוֹבָךְ normative stress /ʃoˈvaχ/, colloquial stress /ˈʃovaχ/, "dovecote". This is also common in the colloquial pronunciation of many personal names, for example דָּוִד normative stress /daˈvid/, colloquial stress /ˈdavid/, "David".^[16]

Specific rules correlate the location or absence of stress in a syllable with the written representation of vowel length and whether or not the syllable ends with a vowel or a consonant.^{[nb 1]} Since spoken Israeli Hebrew does not distinguish between long and short vowels, these rules are not evident in speech. They usually cannot be inferred from written text either, since usually vowel diacritics are omitted. The result is that nowadays stress has phonemic value, as the following table illustrates: acoustically, the following word pairs differ only in the location of the stress; orthographically they differ also in the written representation of the length of the vowels, however if vowel diacritics are omitted (as is usually the case in Modern Israeli Hebrew) they are written identically:

Little ambiguity exists, however, due to context and syntactic features; compare e.g. the English word "conduct" in its nominal and verbal forms.

Vocabulary

Modern Israeli Hebrew has borrowed many words from Aramaic, Yiddish, Ladino, Arabic (spoken Arabic, mainly Judeo Arabic and Palestinian Arabic), German, Latin, Greek, Polish, Russian, English and other languages. Some typical examples are:

Sources

1. ^ Loanwords in Hebrew from Arabic
2. ^ morfix dictionary
3. ^ ^{a b} Loanwords in Hebrew from Russian
4. ^ Loanwords in Hebrew from Turkish
5. ^ Loanwords in Hebrew from Ladino
6. ^ Loanwords in Hebrew from Akkadian

Notes

1. ^ These rules are sometimes slightly different for verbs and nouns; thus the stress in the noun דָּבָר (/daˈvar/, "thing") and the verb גָּבַר (/ɡaˈvar/ "to overpower") are both on the last syllable, even though this syllable is pointed with the sign for a long vowel for the noun and for a short vowel for the verb. Modern classification of vowel diacritics according to the vowel length they allegedly denote, however, might not concur with the historically correct phonological distinction between vowel lengths, see Tiberian vocalization → Full vowels.

References

1. ^ Blau, Joshua, Tehiyyát ha'ivrít ut'hiyyát ha'aravít hasifrutít: kavím makbilím umafridím (The Renaissance of Hebrew in the Light of the Renaissance of Standard Arabic) (=Texts and Studies, vol. ix), Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language, 1976; Blau, Joshua, The Renaissance of Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic: Parallels and Differences in the Revival of Two Semitic Languages (=Near Eastern Studies, vol. xviii), Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981.
2. ^ Wexler, Paul, The Schizoid Nature of Modern Hebrew: A Slavic Language in Search of a Semitic Past: 1990.
3. ^ Izre'el, Shlomo (2003). "The Emergency of Spoken Israeli Hebrew." In: Benjamin H. Hary (ed.), Corpus Linguistics and Modern Hebrew: Towards the Compilation of The Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew (CoSIH)", Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, The Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies, 2003, pp. 85-104.
4. ^ Izre'el, Shlomo (1986). "Was the Revival of the Hebrew Language a Miracle? On Pidginization and Creolization Processes in the Creation of Modern Hebrew." Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress for Jewish Studies, Part 4, Vol. 1: Hebrew and Judaic Languages; Other Languages. Jerusalem. 1986. 77-84. (In Hebrew)
5. ^ Goldenberg, Gideon (1996). "Ha'ivrit kelashon shemit xaya." In: Evolution and Renewal: Trends in the Development of the Hebrew Language. (Publications of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Section of Humanities.) Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. 148-190. (In Hebrew.)
6. ^ Kuzar, R. (2001). Hebrew and Zionism: A Discourse-Analytic Cultural Study. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
7. ^ Zuckermann, Ghil'had (2004). Mosaic or mosaic? – The Genesis of the Israeli Language
8. ^ Zuckermann, Ghil'had (2005). Abba, Why Was Professor Higgins Trying to Teach Eliza to Speak Like Our Cleaning Lady?: Mizrahim, Ashkenazim, Prescriptivism and the Real Sounds of the Israeli Language
9. ^ Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), "Complement Clause Types in Israeli", Complementation: A Cross-Linguistic Typology, edited by R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 72-92.
10. ^ See p. 62 in Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2006), "A New Vision for 'Israeli Hebrew': Theoretical and Practical Implications of Analysing Israel's Main Language as a Semi-Engineered Semito-European Hybrid Language", Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5 (1), pp. 57-71.
11. ^ Ibid., p. 63.
12. ^ ibid.
13. ^ Hebrew vs. Israeli – Forward.com
14. ^ Robert Hetzron. (1987). Hebrew. In The World's Major Languages, ed. Bernard Comrie, 686–704. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-520521-9.
15. ^ Choueka, Yaakov (1997). Rav-Milim: A comprehensive dictionary of Modern Hebrew. Tel-Aviv: CET. ISBN 9654483238. 
16. ^ Netser, Nisan, Niqqud halakha le-maase, 1976, p. 11.