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Estimates of worldwide usage include five million speakers in 1998, [ 4 ] and over nine million people in 2013. [ 24 ] After Israel, the United States has the largest Hebrew-speaking population, with approximately 220,000 fluent speakers (see Israeli Americans and Jewish Americans).
Currently, Hebrew is spoken by approximately 9–10 million people, counting native, fluent, and non-fluent speakers. [16][17] Some 6 million of these speak it as their native language, the overwhelming majority of whom are Jews who were born in Israel or immigrated during infancy.
This is a list of languages by total number of speakers. It is difficult to define what constitutes a language as opposed to a dialect. For example, Chinese and Arabic are sometimes considered single languages, but each includes several mutually unintelligible varieties, and so they are sometimes considered language families instead.
Oct 23, 2024 · Everyday words are derived from existing Hebrew phrasing(e.g., šaʿôn ‘clock’ from šaʿah ‘hour’) or borrowed from contemporary languages (e.g., mishmesh ‘apricot’ from Arabic mishmish). A handful of words are repurposed from biblical expressions (e.g., ẖašmal ‘electricity’ from ‘amber’).
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Shalom (shah-LOME) שלום. Perhaps the best-known Hebrew word today is shalom, which means “peace” or “wellbeing.” It also can be used for both “hello” and “goodbye.”
- Todah (toe-DAH) תודה. Hebrew for gratitude or acknowledgement, this is the modern word for “thank you.” In Temple times, a Jew who felt grateful for G‑d’s salvation from danger would bring a korban todah, a “sacrifice of gratitude.”
- Torah (toe-RAH) תורה. Literally “guide” or “instruction,” the Torah refers to the Five Books of Moses which contain G‑d’s instructions. More broadly, Torah refers to the entire corpus of Jewish spiritual scholarship.
- Mitzvah (mitz-VAH) מצוה. Literally “commandment,” mitzvah refers to any of the 613 commandments in the Torah, especially giving charity. Since a Jew is obligated to follow the commandments after reaching the age of majority, a boy’s 13th birthday is his “bar mitzvah” and a girl’s 12th birthday is her “bat mitzvah.”
May 11, 2023 · Around the world there are around 15 million Hebrew speakers; in the U.S., there are 195,375. An unstoppable force Modern Hebrew has changed significantly but still shares clear ties with...
About 5 billion people are native speakers of just 25 languages. Below is a list of the 25 languages with the highest number of native speakers, according to data from the Ethnologue language catalog in the early 2020s.
