Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages. First, the language is closely related to Phoenician and Moabite, which are in a Canaanite subgroup. The history of the language is divided into four periods including Biblical, Rabbinic, Medieval, and Modern. The language has been in many different forms and has come in contact with different cultures including Greek, Spanish, and Arabic. During the early Mishnaic period, some of the guttural consonants of Biblical Hebrew were combined or confused with one another, and many nouns were borrowed from Aramaic. Hebrew also borrowed a number of Latin and Persian words. For example, "Common man," "governor," "governorship," " world ruler," and "law" in Hebrew are borrowed from Greek. These considerations have definitely enhanced my understanding of Hebrew and its culture in terms of associated historical origin and development. A lot of the religious and political terms came from Greek, meaning that Greek's political system and other cultural factors had a huge influence on Hebrew back then. Furthermore, there are a few traces of dialects that exist in Biblical Hebrew, which is the result of the Masoretic editing of the text. These examples allow me to understand how Hebrew evolved as a language. As mentioned earlier, there are 4 different major periods where Hebrew was modified. Due to historical events, the people who used it, and simplicity issues, Hebrew became almost a different language now. Modern Hebrew, based on the biblical language, contains many innovations designed to meet modern needs; it is the only colloquial speech based on a written language. Linguists track, predict, and extrapolate these changes by observing the relationships of the languages from the past. First, it would be by looking at the language at a specific time and seeing the processes which have resulted in certain developments in the language up to a specific point in time.
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I found it cool how the history of Hebrew was divided into four periods of biblical, Rabbinic, medieval, and modern. This made me relate with the language Korean how it also altered from the time it was first created by King Sejong the Great to our modern language right now. But unlike Hebrew, I think we can still read the old hangul except maybe few letters. But it isn't a different language like modern Hebrew compared to the biblical. Just like Hebrew, Korean borrowed a lot of words from English, Japanese, and Chinese. It is always fun to know how different languages developed over time. Thank you for sharing the history about Hebrew!!