Reply To: Israel LAnguages

@common saychel, Im not understanding your question. Hebrew is unique to Jews why would it be spoken in other countries by the nations? What did Jews speak before Ladino and Yiddish were invented?

Here is a quote”Hebrew is a Middle Eastern language that can be traced back to over 3,000 years ago, while Yiddish is a language which originated in Europe, in the Rhineland (the loosely defined area of Western Germany), over 800 years ago, eventually spreading to eastern and central Europe.”

I understand that the Hebrew we speak today is more modern, but how can you say its a new invented language? If it was invented how can Hebrew speakers understand 98% of the Torah with only select words that are more ancient/old/formal?

Britannica-” Hebrew was supplanted by the western dialect of Aramaic beginning about the 3rd century bce; the language continued to be used as a liturgical and literary language, however. It was revived as a spoken language in the 19th and 20th centuries and is the official language of Israel.”

Ok so they are saying Aramaic was spoken, but again that Hebrew was revived not reinvented. They do write about how some words were given different meaning, but also we see a difference between Torah text, to Nach, and to Mishna. So did the Hebrew language anyway evolve into a more modern and simpler dialect?

Again even if you say that Seforim were written in Hebrew but Hebrew was not spoken, why did they choose to write seforim in “Modern Ivrit” and not in Lashon Hakodesh?