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Estimates of worldwide usage include five million speakers in 1998, [4] and over nine million people in 2013. [25] After Israel, the United States has the largest Hebrew-speaking population, with approximately 220,000 fluent speakers (see Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans). [26]
For example, English has about 450 million native speakers but, depending on the criterion chosen, can be said to have as many as two billion speakers. [2] There are also difficulties in obtaining reliable counts of speakers, which vary over time because of population change and language shift.
Modern Hebrew is the main language of Israel, with Biblical Hebrew remaining as the language of liturgy and religious scholarship of Jews worldwide. In Arab-dominated Yemen and Oman, on the southern rim of the Arabian Peninsula, a few tribes continue to speak Modern South Arabian languages such as Mahri and Soqotri .
The most common scholarly term for the language is "Modern Hebrew" (עברית חדשה).Most people refer to it simply as Hebrew (עברית Hebrew pronunciation:). [18]The term "Modern Hebrew" has been described as "somewhat problematic" [19] as it implies unambiguous periodization from Biblical Hebrew. [19]
On 13 October 1881, while in Paris, Ben-Yehuda began speaking Hebrew with friends in what is believed to be the first modern conversation using the language. [30] Later that year, he made aliyah and came to live in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, Ben-Yehuda tried to garner support for the idea of speaking Hebrew.
Rank Name Native speakers Total speakers 1 Russian: 106,000,000 [1]: 160,000,000 [1]: 2 German: 97,000,000 [2]: 170,000,000 [3]: 3 French: 81,000,000 [4]: 210,000,000 ...
Native Hebrew speakers comprise about 53% of the population. [12] The vast majority of the rest speak Hebrew fluently as a second language. Native-born Israeli Jews are typically native speakers of Hebrew, but a significant minority of Israelis are immigrants who learned Hebrew as a second language.
The Vietnamese people living in Israel are Israeli citizens who also serve in the Israel Defense Forces. Today, the majority of the community lives in the Gush Dan area in the center of Tel Aviv, but also a few dozen Vietnamese-Israelis or Israelis of Vietnamese origin live in Haifa, Jerusalem, and Ofakim. African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem