Hebrew (
עִבְרִית,
Ivrit) is a Northwest Semitic language spoken by Jewish communities worldwide. As of 2020, Modern Hebrew is spoken by over 8 million people worldwide, with nearly 5 million native speakers. Modern Hebrew is one of the official languages of the Levantine Union and the State of New Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Hebrew is also a recognised minority language in Kitara, the Soviet Union and the United Empire. The Levant has the largest Hebrew-speaking population, with about 6 million fluent speakers, followed by New Israel with 1.5 million. About 460,000 speakers reside in the United Empire, mostly from the Levant, while Kitara has the fourth largest Hebrew-speaking population (about 220,000) and the Soviet republic of Yevrey has a small population of about 40,000 speakers.
The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date to the 10th century BCE. Hebrew ceased to be an everyday spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and, to a lesser extent, Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and immigrants. Hebrew survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce and poetry. With the rise of the
Haskalah – the Jewish Enlightenment – in the 19th century, Hebrew was revived as a literary language for secular purposes, and later as a spoken tongue that became the main language of the Yishuv.
The revival of Hebrew as a mother tongue began in the late 19th century Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda led the movement for making the literary and liturgical language into an everyday spoken language, through his organisational efforts, the establishment of schools and the writing of textbooks. In 1890 A Committee of the Hebrew Language was established, which became the Academy of the Hebrew Language in 1953. Further Jewish immigration to Palestine before the Arabian War (1915–17) aided the vernacularisation of Hebrew, and the movement caught real momentum. During the Allied Mandate period (1920–48) many soon understrood the need for a common language amongst Jews, who were arriving from diverse countries and speaking different languages. When the French Mandate of Lebanon and Galilee and the British Mandate of Judea, Palestine and Sinai recognised Hebrew as an official language, its new formal status contributed greatly to its diffusion.
Currently, 90% of Levantine Jews are proficient in Hebrew, and 70% are highly proficient, while 30% of New Israeli Jews reported some proficiency. In the Soviet Union, the use of spoken Hebrew was suppressed until the 1990s, when the relaxation of education laws allowed Hebrew to be taught as a spoken language openly. As of 2020, 20% of Soviet Jews are proficient in Hebrew, though the majority continue to speak Yiddish as their native language. In the 2011 British census, a majority of Ararati Jews reported some knowledge of Hebrew, although only 10% reported Hebrew as their native language, with 90% speaking Yiddish. The majority of Hebrew-speaking British Jews are recent immigrants or Levantine citizens. Kitari Jews largely speak Swahili and Hebrew, and are mostly descended from the Beta Israel – Ethiopian Jews – who fled Ethiopia in the mid 20th century, although there is also a large number of Hebrew-speaking Jewish communities throughout Eastern and Southern Africa, particularly Capeland, Zanzibar and Azanyika.