June 11, 2018

For today’s language—Latin—we move from the living to the dead, so to speak. Until now, Language Mondays have discussed “living” languages. Latin, however, is classified as a “dead” language—that is, one that does not change. Latin is a dead language because it exists almost exclusively as literature written centuries ago. To change, and thus be considered alive, a language must be used by many people in everyday life.

The poet Virgil, seated, wrote of Rome’s creation in his great Latin language epic, the Aeneid. Credit: Mosaic (A.D. 200′s); Bardo Museum, Tunis, Tunisia (Giraudon/Art Resource)

Latin once was alive. In fact, it was the principal language of western Europe for hundreds of years. It was the language of the Roman Empire, and Roman soldiers and traders took it wherever they went. It became especially important in law and government because of its precise expression. It was also the language used in a number of important works of literature and philosophy. Among the classics of Latin literature are the written orations of Cicero, who is sometimes called the greatest master of Latin prose: De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), a philosophical and scientific poem by Lucretius; the Aeneid, an epic poem by Virgil; the Odes, a collection of poems by Horace; the Metamorphoses, a narrative poem by Ovid with more than 200 tales taken from Greek and Roman legends and myths; and Histories and Annals, descriptions of Roman history by Tacitus.

During the Middle Ages, a form of Latin called Medieval Latin became the language of the Christian church and of education. It was used by scholars in universities and schools throughout Europe. By the early 1500’s, however, Latin had stopped being a spoken language. Today, the Roman Catholic Church still considers Latin its official language, though Mass has been celebrated in the tongue of the local community since the mid-1960’s.

But Latin did not entirely go away. The Latin of the late Roman Empire developed into what are known as the Romance languages, including French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish. The word romance comes from a Latin adverb that referred to speakers of Latin who were said to fabulare romanice, which means speak in the Roman way. The Romance languages developed from vernacular Latin, a form of Latin spoken by common people in certain European countries that were conquered by Rome and became Roman provinces.

English, though considered a Germanic language, has many words that have Latin words as their roots. For example, the English words equal, adequate, equable, and equate all have the Latin word aequus (fair) as their root. The word extinct comes from exstinguere (to extinguish). To say someone is in excruciating pain is to indicate that the person is suffering extreme pain. The word excruciating comes from the Latin word excruciare, meaning to torture or to crucify. Excruciare has as one of its own Latin roots, the word crux, meaning cross. Readers of J. K. Rowling’s series of books on the wizard Harry Potter (and the movies based on them) will notice that excruciare would be a root word of cruciatus. In Harry Potter’s world, the Cruciatus Curse is one of the Unforgivable Curses and inflicts severe pain on its victim. Rowling uses a number of other Latinate words for the charms and curses in the Potter books, including Accio (a summoning charm) and Expelliarmus (a charm used to disarm opponents).

A number of Latin terms and expressions continue to be used in their Latin forms. The language of scientific classification has always used Latin and Greek words. Early Western scholars gave organisms Latin and Greek names, and later scientists have kept them because their definitions do not change over time.

Latin terms, or abbreviations of them, are commonly used in bibliographies at the end of nonfiction books. For instance, et al. (for et alii or et alia) means and others. So if the term et al. appears after the name of an author, it means that others were involved in writing the cited book.

Latin expressions and abbreviations occur in a number of other places as well. Have you ever used the initials A.D. when giving a date? They stand for anno Domini—in the year of our Lord. How about i.e. (for id est—that is), e.g. (exempli gratia —for example), circa (about), or etc. (et cetera—and so forth)?

Some Latin expressions have become commonplace. For example, the ancient Roman leader Julius Caesar sent this famous dispatch to the Senate after he defeated King Pharnaces II of Pontus: Veni, vidi, vici (I came, I saw, I conquered). The image of a roaring lion—a symbol of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion-picture studios—is accompanied by the Latin motto, Ars Gratia Artis (Art for Art’s Sake). The expression Amor vincit omnia (Love conquers all) is also well known.

So, even though technically Latin is considered a dead language, its legacy lives on. It does not entirely RIP (requiescat in pace, or rest in peace).

June 4, 2018

Korean is the official language of both North Korea and South Korea. Most language scholars place it in the Altaic language family, which includes Mongolian, Turkish, and, according to some scholars, Japanese. Korean and Japanese share a similar grammatical structure and vocabulary, but not all scholars agree that the two languages are related. Korean also shares much of its vocabulary with Chinese, and it is often considered a link language, one that is related to all neighboring languages of the area.

The flag of South Korea.
Credit: © Archivector/Shutterstock

Korean, like Japanese, uses speech levels (also known as speech styles). Speech levels mean speakers use different vocabulary depending on the level of intimacy (closeness) with the person to whom they speak. For example, an adult would use different words when speaking to a child than when speaking to their boss. Korean is an honorific system, which expresses respect by the use of particular nouns, verbs, and honorific suffixes (endings). Certain suffixes are added to words when talking to someone who is older or considered one’s superior.

The flag of North Korea.
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The alphabet of the Korean language is known as Hangeul (also spelled Han’gul) in South Korea and Joseongeul (also spelled Chosongul) in North Korea. This alphabet is a phonetic writing system in which each symbol or letter represents a particular sound. It was developed in the 1440′s in the court of Sejong the Great, one of the most famous kings in Korean history.

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South Korea.
Credit: WORLD BOOK map

Before the invention of Hangeul, Korean people had adapted Chinese characters for writing in Korean. Today, Korean is sometimes written in a mixture of Hangeul and Chinese characters. About 60 percent of the words in the Korean vocabulary are Chinese in origin. About 35 percent are native Korean, and about 5 percent are foreign loanwords (words that come from other languages).

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North Korea.
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Loanwords in Korean mostly come from the English language and include words referring to modern technology such as  컴퓨터 (keompyuteo) computer and  인터넷 (inteones) internet. Baseball, a very popular sport in Korea, has some familiar terms as well: 스트라이크 (seuteuraeekeu) means strike; 아웃 (ahoot) means out; and 홈런 (homereon) is home run. A few Korean words appear in English, including the martial arts of  합기도 (hapkido) and 태권도 (taekwondo), and such delicious food items as 비빔밥 (bibimbap), 불고기(bulgogi), and 김치 (kimchi).

May 28, 2018

Javanese is a unique language spoken by people from Java, the largest island in Indonesia, a large nation in Southeast Asia. Indonesia is made up of thousands of islands and has an extremely diverse population. Its people belong to about 300 ethnic groups and speak more than 250 languages. The Javanese are the nation’s largest ethnic group, and the Javanese language is Indonesia’s most widely spoken traditional language. More than 84 million people speak Javanese, but it is not the nation’s official language. In the late 1920′s, Indonesian nationalists created a modified form of the Malay language, Bahasa Indonesia, to serve as the official language.

The flag of Indonesia flies over thousands of islands in Southeast Asia. The nation’s largest island, Java, is home to the Javanese language. Credit: © T. Lesia, Shutterstock

Javanese belongs to the Austronesian language family that also includes such Indonesian languages as Balinese (spoken on the island of Bali), Madurese (spoken on the island of Madura), and Sundanese (spoken in western Java). The Austronesian language family spreads far beyond Indonesia, reaching many islands in the Indian and Pacific oceans.

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This map shows the population density in Indonesia. About 60 percent of all the Indonesian people live on the island of Java, though Java accounts for only about 7 percent of the country’s total area. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

A number of languages have influenced Javanese. Ancient overseas trade with India influenced Java’s early culture and language from at least the A.D. 100’s. Javanese contains many words borrowed from Sanskrit, an ancient language of India. The traditional Javanese alphabet also developed from Indian writing. Ancient India’s two great epic poems, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, are popular among the Javanese people today. The poems often shape the plots in traditional Javanese theater, known as wayang. Javanese also contains many words borrowed from Arabic. Arab traders brought Islam to Indonesia in the 1400’s and 1500’s, and most Javanese today are Muslims.

Traders from the Netherlands reached Java in the 1590’s. During most of the period from the 1600’s until 1945, the Netherlands ruled Java and the other islands that eventually became Indonesia. During those years, when Indonesia was known as the Dutch East Indies, many Dutch words were absorbed into Javanese. The Dutch period also introduced the Roman alphabet for writing Javanese.

Javanese was Indonesia’s most widely spoken traditional language in the early 1900’s, but Indonesian nationalists wanted a language that could serve as a unifying force for all Indonesians. They believed that making Javanese the national language would give Javanese speakers an unfair advantage. The nationalists developed Bahasa Indonesia, which means language of Indonesia. They based Bahasa Indonesia largely on a dialect called Coastal Malay. People of different ethnic groups had long used the dialect to communicate with one another in marketplaces and ports. Bahasa Indonesia is the official language used in schools, in newspapers, and for official communication throughout Indonesia. It is closely related to Javanese, and the languages share many words and expressions. Javanese, however, remains the primary language for private and individual communication for millions of people.

May 21, 2018

Japanese is the native language of Japan and the neighboring Ryukyu and Bonin islands. In Japanese, the language is called Nihongo (日本語). Hyojungo is the name of the standard form of the language and the dialect of the Japanese capital, Tokyo. Hyojungo is generally understood despite widely varying regional dialects. There are 127 million native speakers of Japanese. More than 100,000 people speak it as a second language. There are also large Japanese-speaking communities in such countries as Australia, Brazil, and the United States.

The common name for the flag of Japan is Hinomaru, which means sun disc in Japanese. Credit: © T. Lesia, Shutterstock

The oldest written account of Japanese, the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters), dates from A.D. 712, and it is written using Chinese characters called kanji. The dialect of the Kojiki originated with the aristocracy in western Honshu, Japan’s central and largest island. The dialect was spoken in the imperial capital of Kyoto, and it transferred to Tokyo when that city became Japan’s capital in 1868.

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Japan.
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Japanese is traditionally written vertically and from right to left. It is now also written horizontally. The complex writing system uses the established kanji characters plus syllable characters called hiragana and katakana and a Romanized script called romaji. Grammatically, Japanese follows a subject-object-verb order. There are 5 vowels and 16 consonants. Japanese nouns have no gender or number. Nouns are followed by postpositionals, which indicate the grammatical function of the noun.

Japanese characters on this print recount an episode of the 47 Ronin, a group of Japanese warriors in the early 1700′s. Credit: Wood-block print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1847); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (DeAgostini/SuperStock)

Japanese has many onomatopoeic words (words that sound like what they describe) and words that imitate motion. Repeating a word indicates a repetition or continuation of the action. For example, pyon means with a hop, and pyon-pyon means hop-hop.

Japanese is spoken differently based on the social situation. Intimate Japanese is for everyday conversation with family, friends, and co-workers. Polite is for well-educated company and strangers. Honorific is to show honor and respect to elders and superiors. Impersonal is for speeches and writing.

Japanese has been a literary language for many centuries. Women wrote many medieval poetry and prose pieces, including a classic of Japanese literature, The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Shikibu.

Chinese loanwords, called kango, make up about half the Japanese vocabulary. Gairaigo (foreign words) come mostly from European languages. From Dutch, Japanese gets the words kohi (coffee), biiru (beer), and penki (paint). Since the mid-1800′s, most loanwords have come from English, including teburu (table), wapuro (word processor), and rampu (lamp­).

May 14, 2018

Italian is the national language of Italy and an official language of the European Union. It is also a second language in Switzerland, Vatican City, and the small republic of San Marino. Italian is recognized as a minority language in Brazil, Croatia, and Slovenia. In addition, it is spoken in countries that have large Italian immigrant populations. For example, about 1 million people speak Italian in the United States.

The Italian flag is often referred to as il Tricolore (the Tricolor) in Italian. Credit: © T. Lesia, Shutterstock

Italian belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. It is a Romance language, one of the modern languages that developed from Latin. Many forms of Italian are spoken throughout Italy. They are commonly called dialects, but they are more like separate languages than variations of one language.

When Italy became a unified country in 1861, more than 90 percent of the population spoke regional dialects. Today, Standard Italian is used throughout Italy, but it is the first language of few Italians. Most people speak a regional dialect, such as Milanese, Neapolitan, Sicilian, or Venetian, as their first language.

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Italy. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

The sounds of Italian are more simply organized than the sounds of English. Italian spelling is more consistent than English spelling, because each letter or combination of letters usually represents only one distinct sound. As a result, an Italian word is generally pronounced exactly as it is spelled.

Italian and English have similar systems of grammar. In both, the nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs have inflections, which are changes of form. More than 80 percent of the Italian vocabulary is shared with the French, Spanish, and Portuguese languages. Many Italian words have been absorbed into English, such as balcony, carnival, cash, costume, laundry, opera, and piano.

Italian gradually developed from Latin. It emerged as a separate language about A.D. 1000. It consisted of several local dialects that had formed in different regions. After about 1250, the region of Tuscany in northern Italy became the center of cultural life in Italy. The Tuscan dialect of the city of Florence and surrounding areas became the language of literature and culture. Tuscan was the language used by Boccaccio, Dante, and Petrarch, the three greatest Italian writers of the 1300’s.

From the 1300’s to the 1500’s, Italian was widely used as the language of commerce in the eastern Mediterranean area. By the mid-1500’s, Italian had almost completely replaced Latin as a written and spoken language.

The first novel written in Italian was I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni. The historical work was first published in 1827. Its story took place during the 1600’s in the Lombardy region of northern Italy and set the standard for modern Italian prose.

May 7, 2018

In Ireland, you’ll hear sláinte <<SLAHN cha>> in nearly all your daily activities. Sláinte means health in Irish, the national language of the Republic of Ireland, and the word is used much as cheers is used in English. Irish is the country’s first official language, but more people in Ireland speak English, the second official language. In the Irish language, Irish is called Gaeilge (Gaelic).

The flag of Ireland. Credit: © T. Lesia, Shutterstock

Irish belongs to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. About 40 percent of the Irish population claim they speak Irish, though few people practice the language in everyday life. Areas of Ireland collectively called the Gaeltacht speak Irish as their first language.

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Indo-European is the most widespread language family today. Credit: WORLD BOOK diagram

Irish uses letters of the Roman alphabet. But the alphabet uses j, q, x, and z only in foreign and technical words. The letters k, w, and y are not usually used in modern Irish. Nouns are either masculine or feminine. Most verbs are regular. Irish has only 11 irregular verbs (English has more than 80). In simple sentences, the word order is verb, subject, object. For example, “I bought a book” in English would be “Bought I a book” in Irish.

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Irish is the first official language of Ireland.
Credit: WORLD BOOK map

By the start of the Christian era, Irish was spoken throughout Ireland and had spread into Scotland, the west coast of Britain, and the Isle of Man. The Christian missionary Saint Patrick introduced the Roman alphabet to Ireland in the A.D. 400’s.

Norman conquerors from France began to settle in Ireland near the end of the 1100’s. Gradually, they began to speak Irish along with the native population. Classical Modern Irish began to develop in the 1200’s and lasted through the 1600’s. During that time, literary standards for Irish were set that persisted until the 1900’s. English also gained ground in Ireland during that time and was increasingly used for official and legal business in the cities. Irish was the dominant language in most rural areas.

By the early 1700’s, colonists and landowners from England and Scotland largely replaced the old Irish-speaking ruling class. The native gentry who remained adopted English as their everyday language. Irish lived on as the language of the peasant class.

In the 1830’s, the British government established national schools in which English was the official language. During the Great Famine of the 1840’s, about 2.5 million people, many of them Irish speakers, died or left the country. According to the census of 1891, there were fewer than 700,000 speakers of Irish, compared with 1.5 million in the 1861 census.

In 1893, the Gaelic League was founded to revive the use of Irish and to encourage the study of Irish literature. The organization has remained through the years and is a major force today in protecting and promoting the Irish language.

April 30, 2018

Hungarian, the language of Hungary, is unlike most other languages of Europe. English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, for example, all belong to the Indo-European language family. Hungarian, however, is a member of the Finno-Ugric group of languages, which is part of the Uralic language family. Hungarian is related to Estonian and Finnish.

The Hungarian flag flies over millions of Hungarian speakers in Hungary. Credit: © Maximumvector/Shutterstock

An estimated 13 million people speak Hungarian, most of them in Hungary, where it is the official language. Ethnic Hungarians also make up substantial parts of the populations of such countries as Romania and Slovakia, where they tend to speak Hungarian among themselves. The Hungarian language, also known as Magyar, traces its roots back to the Magyar people, who originally lived between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains in what is now Russia. The Magyars started pushing west in the A.D. 500’s, and they eventually settled in the area that makes up modern Hungary. During the their westward migration, the Magyars came into contact with a number of other peoples whose languages influenced their own.

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Hungary. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

Through the years, Hungarian has adopted and adapted words from a number of other languages. Some scholars have suggested that the history of Hungary and the Magyars can be traced, in part, by the words it has borrowed from other languages. During the early migration of the Magyars to what is now Hungary, for example, they came into contact with groups of people who spoke Turkic and Iranian languages. Among the loan words from the Turkic languages are the words for apple (alma), wine (bor), and ankle (boka). Iranian borrowings include the words for bazaar or fair (vásár), cow (tehén), and milk (tej). The Hungarian words for cross (kërëszt) and cat (macska) were taken from the languages of neighboring Slavic peoples.

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Hungarian belongs to the Uralic language family of far northern Europe and Asia. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

Stephen I, Hungary’s first king, ruled from about 1000 until 1038. As a result of Stephen’s rule, Hungary became closely identified with the culture and politics of western Europe. Stephen established the Roman Catholic Church as Hungary’s official religion. The language of the church was Latin, and numerous loan words from Latin made their way into the Hungarian language. Among them were the words for angel (angyal), ink (tinta), and school (iskola). The Hungarian language also uses the Roman (Latin) alphabet.

Over time, Hungarian picked up words from a number of other languages. From trading with Venice and other Italian cities from the 1200’s to the 1400’s, for example, Hungary borrowed and adapted many Italian words. For centuries, while Hungary was part of the Austrian Empire and the country of Austria-Hungary, many German words made their way into the Hungarian language.

Today, Hungarian continues to be a living, growing language. Among the relatively recent additions to the language, for example, are words related to technology, such as internet, cell phone (mobiltelefon), and computer (számítógép); terms from popular culture, such as superstar (szupersztár), action movie (akciófilm), and blockbuster (kasszasiker); and terms relating to medicine and the human body, such as medical genetics (orvosi genetika), gene therapy (génterápia), and arthroscopic surgery (artroszkópos sebészet).

By the way, in case you are wondering, the Hungarian word for Monday is hétfő.

April 23, 2018

Armenia is a rugged country of about 3 million people in the Caucasus Mountain region of southwestern Asia. Present-day Armenia and what is now eastern Turkey make up historic Armenia, the original homeland of the Armenian people. About 7 million people speak the Armenian language worldwide. Armenian has its own alphabet, and it shares few similarities with other modern languages. But like most of the languages of Europe, western Asia, and India, Armenian belongs to the Indo-European language family. Today’s Armenian language also shares some words with Greek, old dialects of Aramaic, and the Iranian language family.

The flag of Armenia, seen here, flies over roughly 3 million Armenian speakers. Credit: © T. Lesia, Shutterstock

The Armenian language was first spoken more than 3,000 years ago. Armenians call their language Hayeren or Haieren, and they refer to themselves as Hay. The first evidence of written Armenian dates to about A.D. 405, when the scribe Mesrop Mashtots created an alphabet to translate the Christian Bible into the Armenian language. The alphabet that Mashtots created borrows some characters from Greek and Syriac—a dialect of the Aramaic language. The Classical Armenian alphabet contained 36 phonemes (distinct sounds) represented by 28 consonants and 8 vowels. Two additional letters later joined the alphabet to accommodate sounds that had not been part of the language as it was first written. The alphabet’s punctuation marks also differ from other languages.

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Armenia. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

In the early A.D. 300′s, Armenia became the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion. Armenians later spent centuries under the control of the Persian and Ottoman (Turkish) empires, and the Armenian language borrowed words from these occupiers. Modern Armenian began taking its present form between the 1400’s and 1600’s. By the mid-1800’s, the language had two main dialects—Eastern and Western Armenian. The dialects had differences in pronunciation and grammar, but many speakers could understand both. Classical Armenian, called Grabar, remained the primary language used for writing into the 1800’s. But modern Armenian, known as Ashkharhabar in the Eastern dialect and Ashkharhapar in Western, soon became standard for both speaking and writing.

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Armenian belongs to the widespread Indo-European language family. Credit: WORLD BOOK diagram

By 1915, the Ottoman Empire had driven most Armenians out of western Armenia, which became eastern Turkey. In an event called the Armenian Genocide, more than one million Armenians were killed or died from starvation or lack of water. Eastern Armenia later became part of the Soviet Union. Armenia remained under Soviet control until 1991, when the people voted to become an independent nation. Today, Eastern Armenian is Armenia’s official language, and it is also spoken by people of Armenian descent who live in nearby Iran, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Many scholars consider Western Armenian an endangered language. It is spoken mainly by Armenians who remain in Turkey.

April 16, 2018

Hindi <<HIHN dee,>>, also called Modern Standard Hindi, is spoken by more than 500 million people. It is the principal official language of India. More than two-fifths of India’s people speak one or more of the dialects (language variations) of Hindi. There are many regional and local dialects in India, and each state has its own official language. Hindi is the official language of the capital, Delhi, and seven states. Hindi speakers live mostly in northern India, but Hindi is commonly heard in other parts of the country. Hindi speakers are also found in Nepal, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and many other countries.

The flag of India flies over hundreds of millions of Hindi speakers in India. Credit: © T. Lesia, Shutterstock

Urdu is a sister language of Hindi. The languages are similar in grammar and pronunciation. When written, however, they use different alphabets and scripts. Cultural differences further separate the languages. Indian Hindus, people who practice Hinduism, often speak Hindi. Indian Muslims, people who practice Islam, often speak Urdu. Urdu is also spoken in Pakistan and Kashmir. Scholars sometimes speak of the two languages collectively as Hindi-Urdu. The spoken form is sometimes called Hindustani. Hindi-Urdu is the main language used in Indian films (Bollywood) and in much Indian popular music.

The Indian film industry produces hundreds of motion pictures every year. Most films are in Hindi (or Hindustani), but some are made in regional languages. Credit: WORLD BOOK photo by David R. Frazier

Hindi is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-European family. It is part of the New Indo-Aryan (NIA) group. Hindi uses the Devanagari alphabet, which has roots in Sanskrit, the oldest formal written language of India. Devanagari is a phonetic alphabet, so each letter represents a sound. It has 44 letters, with 33 consonants and 11 vowels. Smaller marks called matras represent vowels preceded by a consonant. Matras are written on the symbol of the preceding consonant. The letters are formed by markings that hang down from a horizontal line (see the red script in the movie poster above).

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Hindi is spoken in Delhi and the northern states of India. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

Hindi nouns have gender, number, and case. They can be masculine or feminine, singular or plural, and direct or oblique. Most adjectives agree with the gender, number, and case of the nouns they modify. Hindi has four simple tenses and three aspects. Word order for the Hindi language is subject-object-verb. Hindi is written from left to right, and Urdu is written from right to left. Urdu uses the Persian-Arabic alphabet. English words with Hindi origins include bungalow, shampoo, bandana, and jungle.

Hindi and Urdu are based of the spoken dialect of Delhi, Khari Boli, which means standard speech. The modern literary language is based on Khari Boli, which was written in the Devanagari alphabet. Written Hindi can be traced back to poetry of the 1300′s. Hindi prose became prominent in the early 1900’s.

April 9, 2018

Hebrew is one of the world’s oldest living languages. Hebrew has been the main language of the Jewish people since the beginning of Jewish history. It is also one of the two official languages of the state of Israel, along with Arabic.

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Hebrew vowels are indicated by vowel points placed with a consonant. Some vowel points are shown here with the letter Daleth. Credit: WORLD BOOK illustration

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asian family. It comes from the same source as the Arabic and Aramaic languages. The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. Most are consonants, but a few can represent either a consonant or a vowel. Vowels are not usually written, but they can be indicated by a system of dots and lines. Like Arabic and Aramaic, Hebrew is written from right to left.

Throughout history, Jewish communities developed their own ways of pronouncing Hebrew words. In the United States, the two most common pronunciation styles are the Ashkenazic and the Sephardic. The Ashkenazic originated in central and eastern Europe; the Sephardic originated in Spain.

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The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, shown here in alphabetical order from right to left, as Hebrew is written. The illustration shows 26 letters, because 4 letters have two forms—with or without a dot—that stand for different pronunciations. Credit: WORLD BOOK illustration

For centuries, the Hebrew language was often considered sacred, called lashon ha-kodesh (holy language). Most of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, is written in Hebrew. The compilation of Jewish law called the Mishnah, which dates from A.D. 70 to 200, is also written in Hebrew.

In A.D. 135, Roman armies killed or scattered the Jews of Judea and renamed the area Palestine. By about A.D. 200, a Hebrew-speaking community no longer existed. As a result, Hebrew died out as a spoken language and was used only in religious writing and in scholarly discussions for almost 1,700 years.

In the later 1700’s, a religious cultural movement called the Haskalah emerged among German and Polish Jews. The goal of the movement was to modernize traditional Jewish beliefs and practices. Haskalah is Hebrew for enlightenment. The Haskalah stimulated an interest in the revival of Hebrew for nonreligious uses, leading to the establishment of newspapers and magazines in the language. Jewish writers began to turn to Hebrew as a literary language.

Hebrew became popular among Jewish poets and novelists during the 1900’s and early 2000’s. Leading Hebrew writers include the eastern European poet Chaim Nachman Balik and the Israeli novelists and short story writers Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Aharon Appelfeld, David Grossman, Amos Oz, and A. B. Yehoshua. Agnon shared the 1966 Nobel Prize for literature.

Hebrew underwent a revival as a spoken language beginning in the late 1800’s. At that time, Jews from many lands began to settle in Palestine. Many started speaking Hebrew as their everyday language, passing it on to their children.