Hebrew (I'vrit, עברית) is a Semitic language. For two-and-a-half-thousand years Hebrew was used only for study of the Bible and Mishnah, ceremony, and prayer, but it was reborn as a spoken language during the 20th century, replacing Arabic, Ladino, Yiddish and other languages of the Jewish diaspora as the spoken language of the majority of the Jewish people living in Israel.
Hebrew is the official language of the state of Israel.
The Hebrew language is normally written in the
Hebrew alphabet. Due to publishing difficulties, and the unfamiliarity of many readers with the alphabet, there are many ways of transcribing Hebrew into
Roman letters. The only method which is strictly accurate is the
International Phonetic Alphabet. It is used (in a simplified
ASCII form) in the section concerned with
Phonology, to describe the sounds of the Hebrew language. However, the
IPA is quite obscure and redundant when it comes to transcribing the words of a single language to a general audience. Therefore the system that this article will feature will try to restore the sound of Hebrew, and at least some orthographic pecularities. The system comes down to the following:
- The letter tsadeh (צ) is transcribed by "c" so that it could be distinguished from other combinations of /t/ and /s/.
- The letter a'in (ע) with various vowels is transcribed as a', e', i', o' and u'.
- The letter shin (ש) is transcribed by "sh".
- Both the letter tav (ת) and the letter tet (ט) are transcribed by "t".
- The letter he (ה) at the end of a word, which stands for feminine gender, is transcribed by "ah" (it is read /a/)
- The letter quf (ק) is transcribed by "q" (it is read /k/).
- Single-letter prepositions and the definite article are separated with a dash (-) from their subject.
- Stresses and schwas are not marked since the stresses are not pronounced, and the schwa's locations are apparent.
- The vowels are always written.
See Common phrases in different languages