Hebrew language
Hebrew | |
---|---|
עִבְֿרִית, Ivrit | |
Pronunciation | Modern: [ivˈʁit] [note 1] Tiberian: [ʕivˈriθ] |
Revival | Revived in the late 19th century CE. 9 million speakers of Modern Hebrew, of which 5 million are native speakers and 3.3 million are second language speakers (2018)[4] |
Early forms | |
Standard forms | |
Dialects | |
Signed Hebrew (oral Hebrew accompanied by sign)[5] | |
Official status | |
Official language in | Israel (as Modern Hebrew)[6] |
Recognised minority language in | |
Regulated by | Academy of the Hebrew Language האקדמיה ללשון העברית (ha-akademyah la-lashon ha-ʿivrit) |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | he |
ISO 639-2 | heb |
ISO 639-3 | Variously:heb – Modern Hebrewhbo – Classical Hebrew (liturgical)smp – Samaritan Hebrew (liturgical)obm – Moabite (extinct)xdm – Edomite (extinct) |
Glottolog | hebr1246 |
Linguasphere | 12-AAB-a |
Hebrew (Hebrew alphabet: עִבְרִית, ʿĪvrīt, pronounced [ivˈʁit] or [ʕivˈriθ] ; Samaritan script: ࠏࠨࠁࠬࠓࠪࠉࠕ ʿÎbrit) is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language until after 200 CE and as the liturgical language of Judaism (since the Second Temple period) and Samaritanism.[14] The language was revived as a spoken language in the 19th century, and is the only successful large-scale example of linguistic revival. It is the only Canaanite language, as well as one of only two Northwest Semitic languages, with the other being Aramaic, still spoken today.[15][16]
The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date back to the 10th century BCE.[17] Nearly all of the Hebrew Bible is written in Biblical Hebrew, with much of its present form in the dialect that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, during the time of the Babylonian captivity. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Lashon Hakodesh (לְשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶש, lit. 'the holy tongue' or 'the tongue [of] holiness') since ancient times. The language was not referred to by the name Hebrew in the Bible, but as Yehudit (transl. 'Judean') or Səpaṯ Kəna'an (transl. "the language of Canaan").[1][note 2] Mishnah Gittin 9:8 refers to the language as Ivrit, meaning Hebrew; however, Mishnah Megillah refers to the language as Ashurit, meaning Assyrian, which is derived from the name of the alphabet used, in contrast to Ivrit, meaning the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet.[18]
Hebrew ceased to be a regular spoken language sometime between 200 and 400 CE, as it declined in the aftermath of the unsuccessful
With the rise of Zionism in the 19th century, the Hebrew language experienced a full-scale revival as a spoken and literary language. The creation of a modern version of the ancient language was led by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. Modern Hebrew (Ivrit) became the main language of the Yishuv in Palestine, and subsequently the official language of the State of Israel. Estimates of worldwide usage include five million speakers in 1998,[4] and over nine million people in 2013.[24] After Israel, the United States has the largest Hebrew-speaking population, with approximately 220,000 fluent speakers (see Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans).[25]
Modern Hebrew and Arabic are the official languages of the State of Israel,[26] while pre-revival forms of Hebrew are used for prayer or study in Jewish and Samaritan communities around the world today; the latter group utilizes the Samaritan dialect as their liturgical tongue. As a non-first language, it is studied mostly by non-Israeli Jews and students in Israel, by archaeologists and linguists specializing in the Middle East and its civilizations, and by theologians in Christian seminaries.
Etymology
The modern
One of the earliest references to the language's name as "Ivrit" is found in the prologue to the Book of Sirach,[note 4][clarification needed] from the 2nd century BCE.[30] The Hebrew Bible does not use the term "Hebrew" in reference to the language of the Hebrew people;[31] its later historiography, in the Book of Kings, refers to it as יְהוּדִית Yehudit "Judahite (language)".[32]
History
Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages.[33]
According to Avraham Ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the
Hebrew was extinct as a colloquial language by late antiquity, but it continued to be used as a literary language, especially in Spain, as the language of commerce between Jews of different native languages, and as the liturgical language of Judaism, evolving various dialects of literary Medieval Hebrew, until its revival as a spoken language in the late 19th century.[35][36]
Oldest Hebrew inscriptions
In May 2023, Scott Stripling published the finding of what he claims to be the oldest known Hebrew inscription, a curse tablet found at Mount Ebal, dated from around 3200 years ago. The presence of the Hebrew name of god, Yahweh, as three letters, Yod-Heh-Vav (YHV), according to the author and his team meant that the tablet is Hebrew and not Canaanite.[37][38] However, practically all professional archeologists and epigraphers apart from Stripling's team claim that there is no text on this object.[39]
In July 2008, Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa that he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating from around 3,000 years ago.[40] Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said that the inscription was "proto-Canaanite" but cautioned that "[t]he differentiation between the scripts, and between the languages themselves in that period, remains unclear", and suggested that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far.[41]
The
Numerous older tablets have been found in the region with similar scripts written in other Semitic languages, for example,
Classical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew
In its widest sense, Biblical Hebrew refers to the spoken language of ancient Israel flourishing between c. 1000 BCE and c. 400 CE.[42] It comprises several evolving and overlapping dialects. The phases of Classical Hebrew are often named after important literary works associated with them.
- Archaic Biblical Hebrew, also called Old Hebrew or Paleo-Hebrew, from the 10th to the 6th century BCE, corresponding to the Monarchic Period until the Samaritan alphabet, is still used by the Samaritans.
- Standard Biblical Hebrew, also called Biblical Hebrew, Early Biblical Hebrew, Classical Biblical Hebrew or Classical Hebrew (in the narrowest sense), around the 8th to 6th centuries BCE, corresponding to the late Monarchic period and the Babylonian exile. It is represented by the bulk of the Hebrew Bible that attains much of its present form around this time.
- Late Biblical Hebrew, from the 5th to the 3rd centuries BCE, corresponding to the Persian period and represented by certain texts in the Hebrew Bible, notably the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Basically similar to Classical Biblical Hebrew, apart from a few foreign words adopted for mainly governmental terms, and some syntactical innovations such as the use of the particle she- (alternative of "asher", meaning "that, which, who"). It adopted the Imperial Aramaic script(from which the modern Hebrew script descends).
- Israelian Hebrew is a proposed northern dialect of biblical Hebrew, believed to have existed in all eras of the language, in some cases competing with late biblical Hebrew as an explanation for non-standard linguistic features of biblical texts.
Early post-Biblical Hebrew
- Hebrew square scriptof the later scrolls in the 1st century CE, also known as ketav Ashuri (Assyrian script), still in use today.
- Mishnaic Hebrew from the 1st to the 3rd or 4th century CE, corresponding to the Roman Period after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and represented by the bulk of the Mishnah and Tosefta within the Talmud and by the Dead Sea Scrolls, notably the Bar Kokhba letters and the Copper Scroll. Also called Tannaitic Hebrew or Early Rabbinic Hebrew.
Sometimes the above phases of spoken Classical Hebrew are simplified into "Biblical Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 10th century BCE to 2nd century BCE and extant in certain Dead Sea Scrolls) and "Mishnaic Hebrew" (including several dialects from the 3rd century BCE to the 3rd century CE and extant in certain other Dead Sea Scrolls).[43] However, today most Hebrew linguists classify Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew as a set of dialects evolving out of Late Biblical Hebrew and into Mishnaic Hebrew, thus including elements from both but remaining distinct from either.[44]
By the start of the Byzantine Period in the 4th century CE, Classical Hebrew ceased as a regularly spoken language, roughly a century after the publication of the Mishnah, apparently declining since the aftermath of the catastrophic Bar Kokhba revolt around 135 CE.
Displacement by Aramaic
In the early 6th century BCE, the
After
While there is no doubt that at a certain point, Hebrew was displaced as the everyday spoken language of most Jews, and that its chief successor in the Middle East was the closely related Aramaic language, then Greek,[48][note 3] scholarly opinions on the exact dating of that shift have changed very much.[20] In the first half of the 20th century, most scholars followed Abraham Geiger and Gustaf Dalman in thinking that Aramaic became a spoken language in the land of Israel as early as the beginning of Israel's Hellenistic period in the 4th century BCE, and that as a corollary Hebrew ceased to function as a spoken language around the same time. Moshe Zvi Segal, Joseph Klausner and Ben Yehuda are notable exceptions to this view. During the latter half of the 20th century, accumulating archaeological evidence and especially linguistic analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls has disproven that view. The Dead Sea Scrolls, uncovered in 1946–1948 near Qumran revealed ancient Jewish texts overwhelmingly in Hebrew, not Aramaic.
The Qumran scrolls indicate that Hebrew texts were readily understandable to the average Jew, and that the language had evolved since Biblical times as spoken languages do.
The exact roles of Aramaic and Hebrew remain hotly debated. A trilingual scenario has been proposed for the land of Israel. Hebrew functioned as the local
The Christian New Testament contains some Semitic place names and quotes.[56] The language of such Semitic glosses (and in general the language spoken by Jews in scenes from the New Testament) is often referred to as "Hebrew" in the text,[57] although this term is often re-interpreted as referring to Aramaic instead[note 6][note 7] and is rendered accordingly in recent translations.[59] Nonetheless, these glosses can be interpreted as Hebrew as well.[60] It has been argued that Hebrew, rather than Aramaic or Koine Greek, lay behind the composition of the Gospel of Matthew.[61] (See the Hebrew Gospel hypothesis or Language of Jesus for more details on Hebrew and Aramaic in the gospels.)
Mishnah and Talmud
The term "Mishnaic Hebrew" generally refers to the Hebrew dialects found in the Talmud, excepting quotations from the Hebrew Bible. The dialects organize into Mishnaic Hebrew (also called Tannaitic Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or Mishnaic Hebrew I), which was a spoken language, and Amoraic Hebrew (also called Late Rabbinic Hebrew or Mishnaic Hebrew II), which was a literary language. The earlier section of the Talmud is the Mishnah that was published around 200 CE, although many of the stories take place much earlier, and were written in the earlier Mishnaic dialect. The dialect is also found in certain Dead Sea Scrolls. Mishnaic Hebrew is considered to be one of the dialects of Classical Hebrew that functioned as a living language in the land of Israel. A transitional form of the language occurs in the other works of Tannaitic literature dating from the century beginning with the completion of the Mishnah. These include the halachic Midrashim (Sifra, Sifre, Mekhilta 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 dialect of all these works is very similar to Mishnaic Hebrew.
About a century after the publication of the Mishnah, Mishnaic Hebrew fell into disuse as a spoken language. The later section of the Talmud, the Gemara, generally comments on the Mishnah and Baraitot in two forms of Aramaic. Nevertheless, Hebrew survived as a liturgical and literary language in the form of later Amoraic Hebrew, which sometimes occurs in the text of the Gemara.
Hebrew was always regarded as the language of Israel's religion, history and national pride, and after it faded as a spoken language, it continued to be used as a lingua franca among scholars and Jews traveling in foreign countries.[62] After the 2nd century CE when the Roman Empire exiled most of the Jewish population of Jerusalem following the Bar Kokhba revolt, they adapted to the societies in which they found themselves, yet letters, contracts, commerce, science, philosophy, medicine, poetry and laws continued to be written mostly in Hebrew, which adapted by borrowing and inventing terms.
Medieval Hebrew
After the Talmud, various regional literary dialects of Medieval Hebrew evolved. The most important is Tiberian Hebrew or Masoretic Hebrew, a local dialect of Tiberias in Galilee that became the standard for vocalizing the Hebrew Bible and thus still influences all other regional dialects of Hebrew. This Tiberian Hebrew from the 7th to 10th century CE is sometimes called "Biblical Hebrew" because it is used to pronounce the Hebrew Bible; however, properly it should be distinguished from the historical Biblical Hebrew of the 6th century BCE, whose original pronunciation must be reconstructed. Tiberian Hebrew incorporates the scholarship of the Masoretes (from masoret meaning "tradition"), who added vowel points and grammar points to the Hebrew letters to preserve much earlier features of Hebrew, for use in chanting the Hebrew Bible. The Masoretes inherited a biblical text whose letters were considered too sacred to be altered, so their markings were in the form of pointing in and around the letters. The Syriac alphabet, precursor to the Arabic alphabet, also developed vowel pointing systems around this time. The Aleppo Codex, a Hebrew Bible with the Masoretic pointing, was written in the 10th century, likely in Tiberias, and survives into the present day. It is perhaps the most important Hebrew manuscript in existence.
During the
The need to express scientific and philosophical concepts from
Hebrew persevered through the ages as the main language for written purposes by all Jewish communities around the world for a large range of uses—not only liturgy, but also poetry, philosophy, science and medicine, commerce, daily correspondence and contracts. There have been many deviations from this generalization such as
Revival
Hebrew has been
The major result of the literary work of the Hebrew intellectuals along the 19th century was a lexical modernization of Hebrew. New words and expressions were adapted as neologisms from the large corpus of Hebrew writings since the Hebrew Bible, or borrowed from Arabic (mainly by Ben-Yehuda) and older Aramaic and Latin. Many new words were either borrowed from or coined after European languages, especially English, Russian, German, and French. Modern Hebrew became an official language in British-ruled Palestine in 1921 (along with English and Arabic), and then in 1948 became an official language of the newly declared State of Israel. Hebrew is the most widely spoken language in Israel today.
In the Modern Period, from the 19th century onward, the literary Hebrew tradition revived as the spoken language of modern Israel, called variously Israeli Hebrew, Modern Israeli Hebrew, Modern Hebrew, New Hebrew, Israeli Standard Hebrew, Standard Hebrew and so on. Israeli Hebrew exhibits some features of
The literary and narrative use of Hebrew was revived beginning with the Haskalah movement. The first secular periodical in Hebrew,
The revival of the Hebrew language as a mother tongue was initiated in the late 19th century by the efforts of Ben-Yehuda. He joined the Jewish national movement and in 1881 immigrated to Palestine, then a part of the Ottoman Empire. Motivated by the surrounding ideals of renovation and rejection of the diaspora "shtetl" lifestyle, Ben-Yehuda set out to develop tools for making the literary and liturgical language into everyday spoken language. However, his brand of Hebrew followed norms that had been replaced in Eastern Europe by different grammar and style, in the writings of people like Ahad Ha'am and others. His organizational efforts and involvement with the establishment of schools and the writing of textbooks pushed the vernacularization activity into a gradually accepted movement. It was not, however, until the 1904–1914 Second Aliyah that Hebrew had caught real momentum in Ottoman Palestine with the more highly organized enterprises set forth by the new group of immigrants. When the British Mandate of Palestine recognized Hebrew as one of the country's three official languages (English, Arabic, and Hebrew, in 1922), its new formal status contributed to its diffusion. A constructed modern language with a truly Semitic vocabulary and written appearance, although often European in phonology, was to take its place among the current languages of the nations.
While many saw his work as fanciful or even
In the Soviet Union, the use of Hebrew, along with other Jewish cultural and religious activities, was suppressed. Soviet authorities considered the use of Hebrew "reactionary" since it was associated with Zionism, and the teaching of Hebrew at primary and secondary schools was officially banned by the People's Commissariat for Education as early as 1919, as part of an overall agenda aiming to secularize education (the language itself did not cease to be studied at universities for historical and linguistic purposes[72]). The official ordinance stated that Yiddish, being the spoken language of the Russian Jews, should be treated as their only national language, while Hebrew was to be treated as a foreign language.[73] Hebrew books and periodicals ceased to be published and were seized from the libraries, although liturgical texts were still published until the 1930s. Despite numerous protests,[74] a policy of suppression of the teaching of Hebrew operated from the 1930s on. Later in the 1980s in the USSR, Hebrew studies reappeared due to people struggling for permission to go to Israel (refuseniks). Several of the teachers were imprisoned, e.g. Yosef Begun, Ephraim Kholmyansky, Yevgeny Korostyshevsky and others responsible for a Hebrew learning network connecting many cities of the USSR.
Modern Hebrew
Standard Hebrew, as developed by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, was based on Mishnaic spelling and Sephardi Hebrew pronunciation. However, the earliest speakers of Modern Hebrew had Yiddish as their native language and often introduced calques from Yiddish and phono-semantic matchings of international words.
Despite using Sephardic Hebrew pronunciation as its primary basis, modern Israeli Hebrew has adapted to Ashkenazi Hebrew phonology in some respects, mainly the following:
- the replacement of ʔ], respectively, by most Hebrew speakers.
- the conversion of (uvular trill [ʀ], by most of the speakers, like in most varieties of standard German or Yiddish. see Guttural R
- the pronunciation (by many speakers) of tzere< ֵ > as [eɪ] in some contexts (sifréj and téjša instead of Sephardic sifré and tésha)
- the partial elimination of vocal Shva < ְ > (zmán instead of Sephardic zĕman)[75]
- in popular speech, penultimate stress in proper names (Dvóra instead of Dĕvorá; Yehúda instead of Yĕhudá) and some other words[76]
- similarly in popular speech, penultimate stress in verb forms with a second person plural suffix (katávtem "you wrote" instead of kĕtavtém).[note 8]
The vocabulary of Israeli Hebrew is much larger than that of earlier periods. According to Ghil'ad Zuckermann:
The number of attested Biblical Hebrew words is 8198, of which some 2000 are hapax legomena (the number of Biblical Hebrew roots, on which many of these words are based, is 2099). The number of attested Rabbinic Hebrew words is less than 20,000, of which (i) 7879 are Rabbinic par excellence, i.e. they did not appear in the Old Testament (the number of new Rabbinic Hebrew roots is 805); (ii) around 6000 are a subset of Biblical Hebrew; and (iii) several thousand are Aramaic words which can have a Hebrew form. Medieval Hebrew added 6421 words to (Modern) Hebrew. The approximate number of new lexical items in Israeli is 17,000 (cf. 14,762 in Even-Shoshan 1970 [...]). With the inclusion of foreign and technical terms [...], the total number of Israeli words, including words of biblical, rabbinic and medieval descent, is more than 60,000.[77]: 64–65
In Israel, Modern Hebrew is currently taught in institutions called Ulpanim (singular: Ulpan). There are government-owned, as well as private, Ulpanim offering online courses and face-to-face programs.
Current status
Modern Hebrew is the primary official language of the State of Israel. As of 2013[update], there are about 9 million Hebrew speakers worldwide,[78] of whom 7 million speak it fluently.[79][80][81]
Currently, 90% of Israeli Jews are proficient in Hebrew, and 70% are highly proficient.
Steps have been taken to keep Hebrew the primary language of use, and to prevent large-scale incorporation of English words into the Hebrew vocabulary. The Academy of the Hebrew Language of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem currently invents about 2,000 new Hebrew words each year for modern words by finding an original Hebrew word that captures the meaning, as an alternative to incorporating more English words into Hebrew vocabulary. The Haifa municipality has banned officials from using English words in official documents, and is fighting to stop businesses from using only English signs to market their services.[85] In 2012, a Knesset bill for the preservation of the Hebrew language was proposed, which includes the stipulation that all signage in Israel must first and foremost be in Hebrew, as with all speeches by Israeli officials abroad. The bill's author, MK Akram Hasson, stated that the bill was proposed as a response to Hebrew "losing its prestige" and children incorporating more English words into their vocabulary.[86]
Hebrew is one of several languages for which the constitution of South Africa calls to be respected in their use for religious purposes.[8] Also, Hebrew is an official national minority language in Poland, since 6 January 2005.[7]
Phonology
By the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, /ɬ/ had shifted to /s/ in the Jewish traditions, though for the Samaritans it merged with /ʃ/ instead.[44] The Tiberian reading tradition of the Middle Ages had the vowel system /a ɛ e i ɔ o u ă ɔ̆ ɛ̆/, though other Medieval reading traditions had fewer vowels.
A number of reading traditions have been preserved in liturgical use. In Oriental (Sephardi and Mizrahi) Jewish reading traditions, the emphatic consonants are realized as pharyngealized, while the Ashkenazi (northern and eastern European) traditions have lost emphatics and pharyngeals (although according to Ashkenazi law, pharyngeal articulation is preferred over uvular or glottal articulation when representing the community in religious service such as prayer and Torah reading), and show the shift of /w/ to /v/. The Samaritan tradition has a complex vowel system that does not correspond closely to the Tiberian systems.
Modern Hebrew pronunciation developed from a mixture of the different Jewish reading traditions, generally tending towards simplification. In line with
Consonants
Proto- Semitic |
IPA | Hebrew | Example | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
written | Biblical | Tiberian | Modern | Word | Meaning | |||
*b | [b] | ב3 | ḇ/b | /b/ | /v/, /b/ | /v/, /b/ | בית | house |
*d | [ d ]
|
ד3 | ḏ/d | /d/ | /ð/, /d/ | /d/ | דב | bear |
*g | [ɡ] | ג3 | ḡ/g | /ɡ/ | /ɣ/, /ɡ/ | /ɡ/ | גמל | camel |
*p | [p] | פ3 | p̄/p | /p/ | /f/, /p/ | /f/, /p/ | פחם | coal |
*t | [ t ]
|
ת3 | ṯ/t | /t/ | /θ/, /t/ | /t/ | תמר | palm |
*k | [k] | כ3 | ḵ/k | /k/ | /x/, /k/ | /χ/, /k/ | כוכב | star |
*ṭ | [ tʼ ]
|
ט | ṭ | /tˤ/ | /tˤ/ | /t/ | טבח | cook |
*q | [kʼ] | ק | q | /kˤ/ | /q/ | /k/ | קבר | tomb |
*ḏ | [ð] / [d͡ð] | ז2 | z | /z/ | /z/ | /z/ | זכר | male |
*z | [z] / [d͡z] | זרק | threw | |||||
*s | [s] / [t͡s] | ס | s | /s/ | /s/ | /s/ | סוכר | sugar |
*š | [ s̠ ]
|
שׁ2 | š | /ʃ/ | /ʃ/ | /ʃ/ | שׁמים | sky |
*ṯ | [θ] / [t͡θ] | שׁמונה | eight | |||||
*ś | [ ɬ] / [t͡ɬ ]
|
שׂ1 | ś | /ɬ/ | /s/ | /s/ | שׂמאל | left |
*ṱ | [θʼ] / [t͡θʼ] | צ | ṣ | /sˤ/ | /sˤ/ | /ts/ | צל | shadow |
*ṣ | [sʼ] / [t͡sʼ] | צרח | screamed | |||||
*ṣ́ | [ɬʼ] / [t͡ɬʼ] | צחק | laughed | |||||
*ġ | [ɣ]~[ʁ] | ע | ʻ | /ʁ/ | /ʕ/ | /ʔ/, - | עורב | raven |
*ʻ | [ʕ] | /ʕ/ | עשׂר | ten | ||||
*ʼ | [ʔ] | א | ʼ | /ʔ/ | /ʔ/ | /ʔ/, - | אב | father |
*ḫ | [x]~[χ] | ח2 | ḥ | /χ/ | /ħ/ | /χ/ | חמשׁ | five |
*ḥ | [ħ] | /ħ/ | חבל | rope | ||||
*h | [h] | ה | h | /h/ | /h/ | /h/, - | הגר | emigrated |
*m | [m] | מ | m | /m/ | /m/ | /m/ | מים | water |
*n | [ n ]
|
נ | n | /n/ | /n/ | /n/ | נביא | prophet |
*r | [ɾ] | ר | r | /ɾ/ | /ɾ/ | /ʁ/ | רגל | leg |
*l | [ l ]
|
ל | l | /l/ | /l/ | /l/ | לשׁון | tongue |
*y | [j] | י | y | /j/ | /j/ | /j/ | יד | hand |
*w | [w] | ו | w | /w/ | /w/ | /v/ | ורד | rose |
Proto-Semitic | IPA | Hebrew | Biblical | Tiberian | Modern | Example |
Notes:
- Proto-Semitic *ś was still pronounced as [ɬ] in Biblical Hebrew, but no letter was available in the Phoenician alphabet, so the letter ש had two pronunciations, representing both /ʃ/ and /ɬ/. Later on, however, /ɬ/ merged with /s/, but the old spelling was largely retained, and the two pronunciations of ש were distinguished graphically in Tiberian Hebrewas שׁ /ʃ/ vs. שׂ /s/ < /ɬ/.
- Biblical Hebrew as of the 3rd century BCE apparently still distinguished the phonemes ġ versus ʻ and ḫ versus ḥ, as witnessed by transcriptions in the Septuagint. As in the case of /ɬ/, no letters were available to represent these sounds, and existing letters did double duty: ח for /χ/ and /ħ/ and ע for /ʁ/ and /ʕ/. In all of these cases, however, the sounds represented by the same letter eventually merged, leaving no evidence (other than early transcriptions) of the former distinctions.
- Hebrew and Aramaic underwent Sephardic pronunciationwhich lost the distinction)
Grammar
Hebrew grammar is partly
Morphology
Like all Semitic languages, the Hebrew language exhibits a pattern of stems consisting typically of "
Hebrew uses a number of
The vowel accompanying each of these letters may differ from those listed above, depending on the first letter or vowel following it. The rules governing these changes are hardly observed in colloquial speech as most speakers tend to employ the regular form. However, they may be heard in more formal circumstances. For example, if a preposition is put before a word that begins with a moving Shva, then the preposition takes the vowel /i/ (and the initial consonant may be weakened): colloquial be-kfar (= "in a village") corresponds to the more formal bi-khfar.
The definite article may be inserted between a preposition or a conjunction and the word it refers to, creating composite words like mé-ha-kfar (= "from the village"). The latter also demonstrates the change in the vowel of mi-. With be, le and ke, the definite article is assimilated into the prefix, which then becomes ba, la or ka. Thus *be-ha-matos becomes ba-matos (= "in the plane"). This does not happen to mé (the form of "min" or "mi-" used before the letter "he"), therefore mé-ha-matos is a valid form, which means "from the airplane".
- * indicates that the given example is grammatically non-standard.
Syntax
Like most other languages, the vocabulary of the Hebrew language is divided into verbs, nouns, adjectives and so on, and its sentence structure can be analyzed by terms like object, subject and so on.
- Though early Biblical Hebrew had a VSO ordering, this gradually transitioned to a subject-verb-object ordering. Many Hebrew sentences have several correct orders of words.
- In Hebrew, there is no indefinite article.
- Hebrew sentences do not have to include verbs; the copula in the present tense is omitted. For example, the sentence "I am here" (אני פה ani po) has only two words; one for I (אני) and one for here (פה). In the sentence "I am that person" (אני הוא האדם הזה ani hu ha'adam ha'ze), the word for "am" corresponds to the word for "he" (הוא). However, this is usually omitted. Thus, the sentence (אני האדם הזה) is more often used and means the same thing.
- Negative and interrogative sentences have the same order as the regular declarative one. A question that has a yes/no answer begins with "האם" (ha'im, an interrogative form of 'if'), but it is largely omitted in informal speech.
- In Hebrew there is a specific preposition (את et) for direct objects that would not have a preposition marker in English. The English phrase "he ate the cake" would in Hebrew be הוא אכל את העוגה hu akhal et ha'ugah (literally, "He ate את the cake"). The word את, however, can be omitted, making הוא אכל העוגה hu akhal ha'ugah ("He ate the cake"). Former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was convinced that את should never be used as it elongates the sentence without adding meaning.
- In spoken Hebrew את ה- et ha- is also often contracted to -תַ' ta-, e.g. ת'אנשים ta-anashim instead of את האנשים et ha-anashim (the ' indicates non-standard use). This phenomenon has also been found by researchers in the Bar Kokhba documents: מעיד אני עלי תשמים… שאני נותן תכבלים ברגליכם, writing תללו instead of את הללו, as well as תדקל and so on.[citation needed]
Writing system
Users of the language write Modern Hebrew from
Liturgical use in Judaism
Hebrew has always been used as the language of prayer and study, and the following pronunciation systems are found.
pronunciation.These pronunciations are still used in synagogue ritual and religious study in Israel and elsewhere, mostly by people who are not native speakers of Hebrew. However, some traditionalist Israelis use liturgical pronunciations in prayer.
Many synagogues in the diaspora, even though Ashkenazi by rite and by ethnic composition, have adopted the "Sephardic" pronunciation in deference to Israeli Hebrew. However, in many British and American schools and synagogues, this pronunciation retains several elements of its Ashkenazi substrate, especially the distinction between tsere and segol.
See also
References
Notes
- Ashkenazi: [ivˈʀis] or [ivˈris], strict pronunciation [ʔivˈris] or [ʔivˈʀis].
- ^ Later Hellenistic writers such as Josephus and the Gospel of John used the term Hebraisti to refer to both Hebrew and Aramaic.[1]
- ^ a b Sáenz-Badillos, Ángel (1993): "There is general agreement that two main periods of RH (Rabbinical Hebrew) can be distinguished. The first, which lasted until the close of the Tannaitic era (around 200 CE), is characterized by RH as a spoken language gradually developing into 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. Then it continued to be used in later rabbinic writings until the tenth century in, for example, the Hebrew portions of the two Talmuds and in midrashic and haggadic literature."[21]
- ^ See original text
- ^ Fernández & Elwolde: "It is generally believed that the Dead Sea Scrolls, specifically the Copper Scroll and also the Bar Kokhba letters, have furnished clear evidence of the popular character of MH [Mishnaic Hebrew]."[50]
- ^ The Cambridge History of Judaism: "Thus in certain sources Aramaic words are termed 'Hebrew,' ... For example: η επιλεγομενη εβραιστι βηθεσδα 'which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda' (John 5.2). This is not a Hebrew name but rather an Aramaic one: בית חסדא, 'the house of Hisda'."[51]
- ^ Fitzmyer, Joseph A.: "The adverb Ἑβραϊστί (and its related expressions) seems to mean 'in Hebrew', and it has often been argued that it means this and nothing more. As is well known, it is used at times with words and expressions that are clearly Aramaic. Thus in John 19:13, Ἑβραιστὶ δὲ Γαββαθᾶ is given as an explanation of the Lithostrotos, and Γαββαθᾶ is a Grecized form of the Aramaic word gabbětā, 'raised place.'"[58]
- ^ These pronunciations may have originated in learners' mistakes formed on the analogy of other suffixed forms (katávta, alénu), rather than being examples of residual Ashkenazi influence.
- ^ According to the generally accepted view, it is unlikely that begadkefat spirantization occurred before the merger of /χ, ʁ/ and /ħ, ʕ/, or else [x, χ] and [ɣ, ʁ] would have to be contrastive, which is cross-linguistically rare. However, Blau argues that it is possible that lenited /k/ and /χ/ could coexist even if pronounced identically, since one would be recognized as an alternating allophone (as apparently is the case in Nestorian Syriac). See Blau (2010:56).
Citations
- ^ a b c Sáenz-Badillos (1993)
- ^ H. S. Nyberg 1952. Hebreisk Grammatik. s. 2. Reprinted in Sweden by Universitetstryckeriet, Uppsala, 2006.
- ^ Modern Hebrew at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
Classical Hebrew (liturgical) at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
Samaritan Hebrew (liturgical) at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
Moabite (extinct) at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016)
Edomite (extinct) at Ethnologue (19th ed., 2016) - ^ a b "Hebrew". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 14 May 2020. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
- ^ Meir, Irit; Sandler, Wendy (2013). A Language in Space: The Story of Israeli Sign Language.
- ^ "Basic Law: Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People" (PDF). The Knesset. The State of Israel. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 April 2021. Retrieved 31 August 2020.
- ^ a b Pisarek, Walery. "The relationship between official and minority languages in Poland" (PDF). European Federation of National Institutions for Language. Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 December 2019. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
- ^ a b "Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 – Chapter 1: Founding Provisions | South African Government". www.gov.za. Archived from the original on 18 May 2019. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
- ISBN 978-1-85359-510-3, retrieved 6 October 2023,
"Mother tongue" education is mostly limited to Turkish teaching in Turkey. No other language can be taught as a mother tongue other than Armenian, Greek, and Hebrew, as agreed in the Lausanne Treaty [...] Like Jews and Greeks, Armenians enjoy the privilege of an officially recognized minority status. [...] No language other than Turkish can be taught at schools or at cultural centers. Only Armenian, Greek, and Hebrew are exceptions to this constitutional rule.
- OCLC 865002828.
- ISSN 0012-8449. p. 514:
This implies that Turkey grants educational right in minority languages only to the recognized minorities covered by the Lausanne who are the Armenians, Greeks and the Jews.
- ISBN 978-1-4094-7254-4.
Oran farther points out that the rights set out for the four categories are stated to be the 'fundamental law' of the land, so that no legislation or official action shall conflict or interfere with these stipulations or prevail over them (article 37). [...] According to the Turkish state, only Greek, Armenian and Jewish non-Muslims were granted minority protection by the Lausanne Treaty. [...] Except for non-Muslim populations - that is, Greeks, Jews and Armenians - none of the other minority groups' language rights have been de jure protected by the legal system in Turkey.
- ^ Questions and Answers: Freedom of Expression and Language Rights in Turkey. New York: Human Rights Watch. April 2002.
The Turkish government accepts the language rights of the Jewish, Greek and Armenian minorities as being guaranteed by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.
- ^ Chomsky, William (1957). Hebrew: The Eternal Language. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America. pp. 1–13.
- ISBN 978-0-521-01652-0. Archivedfrom the original on 8 April 2023. Retrieved 28 March 2017.
Hebrew is cited by Paulston et al. (1993:276) as 'the only true example of language revival.'
- ^ Fesperman, Dan (26 April 1998). "Once 'dead' language brings Israel to life Hebrew: After 1,700 years, a revived language becomes a common thread knitting together a nation of immigrants with little in common except religion". The Baltimore Sun. Sun Foreign Staff. Archived from the original on 29 March 2017. Retrieved 28 March 2017.
- ^ "Most ancient Hebrew biblical inscription deciphered". Physorg.com. 7 January 2010. Archived from the original on 27 January 2012. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
- ^ Hoffman, Joel M. In the Beginning : A Short History of the Hebrew Language. New York, New York University Press, 2006, p. 169.
- ^ Sáenz-Badillos (1993), p. 171 Archived 8 April 2023 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b "Hebrew" in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edit. F.L. Cross, first edition (Oxford, 1958), 3rd edition (Oxford 1997). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church which once said, in 1958 in its first edition, that Hebrew "ceased to be a spoken language around the fourth century BCE", now says, in its 1997 (third) edition, that Hebrew "continued to be used as a spoken and written language in the New Testament period".
- ^ a b c Sáenz-Badillos (1993), p. 170–171
- ^ "If you couldn't speak Greek by say the time of early Christianity you couldn't get a job. You wouldn't get a good job. A professional job. You had to know Greek in addition to your own language. And so you were getting to a point where Jews... the Jewish community in, say, Egypt and large cities like Alexandria didn't know Hebrew anymore, they only knew Greek. And so you need a Greek version in the synagogue." – Josheph Blankinsopp, Professor of Biblical Studies University of Notre Dame in A&E's Who Wrote the Bible
- ^ "Abraham Ben Isaac Ben Garton". Archived from the original on 27 October 2022. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
- ^ a b "'Kometz Aleph – Au': How many Hebrew speakers are there in the world?". Nachman Gur for Behadrey Haredim. Archived from the original on 4 November 2013. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
- ^ "Table 53. Languages Spoken at Home by Language: 2009", The 2012 Statistical Abstract, U.S. Census Bureau, archived from the original on 25 December 2007, retrieved 27 December 2011
- ^ Constitution for Israel, The Knesset, the State of Israel, archived from the original on 19 July 2018, retrieved 27 December 2011
- ^ "Strong's Hebrew: 5676. עֵ֫בֶר (eber) – region across or beyond, side". biblehub.com. Archived from the original on 17 April 2018. Retrieved 25 March 2018.
- ^ "הספריה של מט"ח". Lib.cet.ac.il. Archived from the original on 2 May 2013. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
- ^ Muss-Arnolt, William (1905). A Concise Dictionary of the Assyrian Languages. Reuther & Reichard. p. 9. Archived from the original on 8 April 2023. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
- ISBN 978-90-04-16906-7.
- ^ Barton, John, ed. (2004) [2002]. The Biblical World. 2. Taylor & Francis. p. 7.
- ^ Kings II 18:26.
- ^ Ross, Allen P. Introducing Biblical Hebrew, Baker Academic, 2001.
- ^ אברהם בן יוסף ,מבוא לתולדות הלשון העברית (Avraham ben-Yosef, Introduction to the History of the Hebrew Language), page 38, אור-עם, Tel-Aviv, 1981.
- ISBN 978-1-107-09588-5. Archivedfrom the original on 8 April 2023. Retrieved 1 November 2017.
- ISBN 978-90-279-2495-7. Archivedfrom the original on 8 April 2023. Retrieved 1 November 2017.
- S2CID 258620459.
- ^ "Ancient tablet found on Mount Ebal predates known Hebrew inscriptions". 14 May 2023.
- ^ See For Yourself: Analyzing the Ebal "Inscription" | Bible & Archaeology, retrieved 9 September 2023
- ^ "'Oldest Hebrew script' is found". BBC News. 30 October 2008. Archived from the original on 24 October 2010. Retrieved 3 March 2010.
- ^ "Have Israeli Archaeologists Found World's Oldest Hebrew Inscription?". Haaretz. AP. 30 October 2008. Archived from the original on 6 August 2011. Retrieved 8 November 2010.
- ^ "William M. Schniedewind, "Prolegomena for the Sociolinguistics of Classical Hebrew", The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures vol. 5 article 6" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 February 2012.
- ^ M. Segal, A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927).
- ^ a b Qimron, Elisha (1986). The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Harvard Semitic Studies 29. (Atlanta: Scholars Press).
- ^ Nicholas Ostler, Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, Harper Perennial, London, New York, Toronto, Sydney 2006 p80
- ^ "Cyrus the Great: History's most merciful conqueror?". Culture. 6 May 2019. Archived from the original on 8 September 2020. Retrieved 7 September 2020.
- ^ Andrew Silow-Carroll. "Who is King Cyrus, and why did Netanyahu compare him to Trump?". The Times of Israel. Archived from the original on 7 September 2020. Retrieved 7 September 2020.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-85359-451-9.
- ^ a b Fernandez, Miguel Perez (1997). An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew. BRILL.
- ^ An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew (Fernández & Elwolde 1999, p.2)
- ^ a b The Cambridge History of Judaism: The late Roman-Rabbinic period. 2006. P.460
- ^ Borrás, Judit Targarona and Ángel Sáenz-Badillos (1999). Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. P.3
- ISBN 978-1-885923-39-4.[dead link]
- ^ a b Spolsky, B. (1985). "Jewish Multilingualism in the First century: An Essay in Historical Sociolinguistics", Joshua A. Fishman (ed.), Readings in The Sociology of Jewish Languages, Leiden: E. J. Brill, pp. 35–50. Also adopted by Smelik, Willem F. 1996. The Targum of Judges. P.9
- ^ Spolsky, B. (1985), p. 40. and passim
- ^ Huehnergard, John and Jo Ann Hackett. The Hebrew and Aramaic languages. In The Biblical World (2002), Volume 2 (John Barton, ed.). P.19
- ^ E.g. Acts 21:40; 22:2; 26:14: têi hebraḯdi dialéktôi, lit. 'in the Hebrew dialect/language'
- ^ Fitzmyer, Joseph A. 1979. A Wandering Armenian: Collected Aramaic Essays. P.43
- ^ Geoffrey W. Bromley (ed.) The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, W.B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan 1979, 4 vols. vol.1 sub.'Aramaic' p.233: 'in the Aramaic vernacular of Palestine'
- ^ Randall Buth and Chad Pierce "EBRAISTI in Ancient Texts, Does ἑβραιστί ever Mean 'Aramaic'?" in Buth and Notley eds., Language Environment of First Century Judaea, Brill, 2014:66–109. p. 109 "no, Ἑβραιστί does not ever appear to mean Aramaic in attested texts during the Second Temple and Graeco-Roman periods."; p. 107 "John did not mention what either βεθεσδα or γαββαθα meant. They may both have been loanwords from Greek and Latin respectively." p103 "βεθεσδα ... (בית-אסטא(ן ... house of portico ... 3Q15 אסטאן הדרומית southern portico," and Latin gabata (p. 106) "means platter, dish... perhaps a mosaic design in the pavement ... " The Latin loanword is attested as "bowl" in later Christian Palestinian Aramaic and גבתא is (p106) "unattested in other Aramaic dialects" [contra the allegations of many].
- ^ Grintz, Jehoshua M., "Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language in the Last Days of the Second Temple", Journal of Biblical Literature (1960) 79 (1): pp. 32–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/3264497
- ^ "National Virtual Translation Center". Federal Bureau of Investigation. Archived from the original on 17 January 2009.
- ^ Abraham ibn Ezra, Hebrew Grammar Archived 1 July 2021 at the Wayback Machine, Venice 1546 (Hebrew)
- ^ T. Carmi, Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse.
- ^ Safrai, Shmuel, Shemuel Safrai, M. Stern. 1976. The Jewish people in the first century. P.1036
- ^ Fox, Marvin. 1995. Interpreting Maimonides. P.326
- ^ "1577 The First Printing Press in the Middle East – Safed – Center for Online Judaic Studies". Center for Online Judaic Studies. 7 September 2017. Archived from the original on 4 August 2018. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
- ISBN 978-0-87306-198-8. Archivedfrom the original on 8 April 2023. Retrieved 3 May 2013.
- ^ Bensadoun, Daniel (15 October 2010). "This week in history: Revival of the Hebrew language – Jewish World – Jerusalem Post". Archived from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 6 April 2018.
- ^ Spiegel, Shalom. Hebrew Reborn (1930), Meridian Books reprint 1962, New York p. 56.
- ^ Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Resurgence of the Hebrew Language Archived 15 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine by Libby Kantorwitz
- ^ "The Transformation of Jewish Culture in the USSR from 1930 to the Present (in Russian)". Jewish-heritage.org. Archived from the original on 22 December 2012. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
- ^ Nosonovsky, Michael (25 August 1997). "ЕВРЕЙСКАЯ СОВЕТСКАЯ КУЛЬТУРА БЫЛА ПРИГОВОРЕНА К УНИЧТОЖЕНИЮ В 1930–Е ГОДЫ" [Jewish Soviet Culture Was Sentenced to Destruction in the 1930s] (in Russian). Berkovich-zametki.com. Archived from the original on 7 July 2011. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
- ^ Protest against the suppression of Hebrew in the Soviet Union 1930–1931 signed by Albert Einstein, among others.
- ISBN 978-0-226-72603-8.
- ^ Shisha Halevy, Ariel (1989). The Proper Name: Structural Prolegomena to its Syntax – a Case Study in Coptic. Vienna: VWGÖ. p. 33. Archived from the original on 21 July 2011.
- ^ Klein, Zeev (18 March 2013). "A million and a half Israelis struggle with Hebrew". Israel Hayom. Archived from the original on 4 November 2013. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
- ^ "The differences between English and Hebrew". Frankfurt International School. Archived from the original on 6 November 2013. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
- ^ "Hebrew – UCL". University College London. Archived from the original on 6 November 2013. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
- ^ "Why Learn a Language?". Archived from the original on 3 November 2013. Retrieved 2 November 2013.
- ^ a b c Druckman, Yaron (21 January 2013). "CBS: 27% of Israelis struggle with Hebrew – Israel News, Ynetnews". Ynetnews. Ynetnews.com. Archived from the original on 15 April 2013. Retrieved 9 November 2013.
- ^ The Israeli Conflict System: Analytic Approaches
- ^ "Some Arabs Prefer Hebrew – Education – News". Israel National News. 13 June 2009. Archived from the original on 4 December 2014. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
- ^ Silverman, Anav (17 January 2013). "Keeping Hebrew Israel's living language – Israel Culture, Ynetnews". Ynetnews. Ynetnews.com. Archived from the original on 24 April 2013. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
- ^ Danan, Deborah (28 December 2012). "Druse MK wins prize for helping preserve Hebrew | JPost | Israel News". JPost. Archived from the original on 18 March 2013. Retrieved 25 April 2013.
- ^ Dolgopolsky, Aron (1999). From Proto-Semitic to Hebrew: Phonology: etymological approach in a Hamito-Semitic perspective. Milano: Centro Studi Camito-Semitici. p. 72.
- ^ Dolgopolsky (1999:73)
- ISBN 978-1-57506-129-0. No text access via Google Books.
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- ^ Staff, Biblical Archaeology Society (15 March 2022). "The Phoenician Alphabet in Archaeology". Biblical Archaeology Society. Retrieved 15 May 2024.
Sources
- Hoffman, Joel M. (August 2004). In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language. New York: NYU Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-3654-8.
- Izre'el, Shlomo (2001). Hary, Benjamin (ed.). "The Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew". (CoSIH): Working Papers I. Archived from the original on 27 December 2011. Retrieved 25 January 2006.
- Klein, Reuven Chaim (2014). Lashon HaKodesh: History, Holiness, & Hebrew. Mosaica Press. ISBN 978-1-937887-36-0.
- Kuzar, Ron (2001). Hebrew and Zionism: A Discourse Analytic Cultural Study. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-016993-5.
- Laufer, Asher (1999). Hebrew Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. ISBN 978-0-521-65236-0.
- Sáenz-Badillos, Angel (1993) [1988]. A History of the Hebrew Language. Translated by John Elwolde. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-55634-7. Archivedfrom the original on 8 April 2023. Retrieved 16 October 2015.
External links
- Works related to Hebrew language and literature at Wikisource
Government
- Official website of the Academy of the Hebrew Language
- Ma'agarim – The Historical Dictionary Project by the Academy of the Hebrew Language
- Hebrew Phrases by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism
General information
- Hebrew language at the Jewish Encyclopedia
- A Guide to Hebrew at BBC Online
- A Short History of the Hebrew Language by Chaim Menachem Rabin
- Hebrew language at Curlie
Tutorials, courses and dictionaries
- Hebrew language at the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts
- Hebrew Basic Course by the Foreign Service Institute
- Phonetically Transcribed Modern Hebrew Course Archived 26 May 2022 at the Wayback Machine by Polyglot Daniel Epstein