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The revival of the Hebrew language [a] took place in Europe and the Levant region toward the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, through which the language's usage changed from purely the sacred language of Judaism to a spoken and written language used for daily life among the Jews in Palestine, and later Israel.
The Renaissance of Modern Hebrew and Modern Standard Arabic: Parallels and Differences in the Revival of Two Semitic Languages. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-09548-9. Fellman, Jack (1973). The Revival of a Classical Tongue: Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Modern Hebrew Language. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton. 1973. ISBN 90-279-2495-3
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda largely spearheaded the revival efforts, and his son Itamar Ben-Avi was raised as the first native Hebrew speaker since Hebrew's extinction as an everyday language. Hebrew is now the primary official language of Israel, and the most commonly spoken language there. [9] It is spoken by over 9,000,000 people today. [10]
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 ...
Developed as part of the revival of Hebrew in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it is the official language of the State of Israel and the only Canaanite language still spoken as a native language. The revival of Hebrew predates the creation of the state of Israel, where it is now the national language.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda is the main revivalist of Hebrew as a modern spoken language, although in his book Language in Time of Revolution, Israeli scholar Benjamin Harshav diminishes Ben-Yehuda's role and attributes the success of the revival to a wider movement in the Jewish society.
Additionally, the revival of the Hebrew language as the national language of Israel, created a significant decline in the use of Yiddish in the daily Jewish life. [25] To some, Yiddish was seen as the language of the Jewish people in diaspora and believed its use should be extinguished in the early establishment of Israel. [26]
He was also a major proponent in the revival of the Hebrew language, teaching in and directing public schools in Palestine. [2] He pioneered the “natural method” of teaching Hebrew, in which the teacher makes explanations only in Hebrew. [3] [4] He was brother of the writer Zalman Epstein. [citation needed]