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Hebrew Alphabet
The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian. It is also used informally in Israel to write Levantine Arabic, especially among Druze. It is an offshoot of the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, which flourished during the Achaemenid Empire and which itself derives from the Phoenician alphabet. Historically, two separate abjad scripts have been used to write Hebrew. The original, old Hebrew script, known as the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, has been largely preserved in a variant form as the Samaritan alphabet. The present "Jewish script" or "square script", on the contrary, is a stylized form of the Aramaic alphabet and was technically known by Jewish sages as Ashurit (lit. "Assyrian script"), since its origins we ...
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Abjad
An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introduced in 1990 by Peter T. Daniels. Other terms for the same concept include: partial phonemic script, segmentally linear defective phonographic script, consonantary, consonant writing, and consonantal alphabet.Amalia E. Gnanadesikan (2017) Towards a typology of phonemic scripts, Writing Systems Research, 9:1, 14-35, DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2017.1308239 "Daniels (1990, 1996a) proposes the name abjad for these scripts, and this term has gained considerable popularity. Other terms include partial phonemic script (Hill, 1967), segmentally linear defective phonographic script (Faber, 1992), consonantary (Trigger, 2004), consonant writing (Coulmas, 1989) and consonantal alphabet (Gnanadesikan, 2009; Healey, 1990). " Impure abja ...
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Pahlavi Scripts
Pahlavi is a particular, exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages. The essential characteristics of Pahlavi are: *the use of a specific Aramaic-derived script; *the incidence of Aramaic words used as heterograms (called '' hozwārishn'', "archaisms"). Pahlavi compositions have been found for the dialects/ethnolects of Parthia, Persis, Sogdiana, Scythia, and Khotan. Independent of the variant for which the Pahlavi system was used, the written form of that language only qualifies as Pahlavi when it has the characteristics noted above. Pahlavi is then an admixture of: *written Imperial Aramaic, from which Pahlavi derives its script, logograms, and some of its vocabulary. *spoken Middle Iranian, from which Pahlavi derives its terminations, symbol rules, and most of its vocabulary. Pahlavi may thus be defined as a system of writing applied to (but not unique for) a specific language group, but with critical features alien to that language group. It has the c ...
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Paleo-Hebrew Alphabet
The Paleo-Hebrew script ( he, הכתב העברי הקדום), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite inscriptions from the region of biblical Israel and Judah. It is considered to be the script used to record the original texts of the Hebrew Bible due to its similarity to the Samaritan script, as the Talmud stated that the Hebrew ancient script was still used by the Samaritans. The Talmud described it as the "Libona'a script" ( he, לִיבּוֹנָאָה ''Lībōnāʾā''), translated by some as "Lebanon script". Use of the term "Paleo-Hebrew alphabet" is due to a 1954 suggestion by Solomon Birnbaum, who argued that " apply the term Phoenician to the script of the Hebrews is hardly suitable". The first Paleo-Hebrew inscription identified in modern times was the '' Shebna inscription'', found in 1870, and then referred to as "two large ancient Hebrew inscriptions in Phoenician letters".Clermont-Ganneau, 1899Archaeological Resea ...
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Achaemenid Empire
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest empire in history, spanning a total of from the Balkans and Egypt in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east. Around the 7th century BC, the region of Persis in the southwestern portion of the Iranian plateau was settled by the Persians. From Persis, Cyrus rose and defeated the Median Empire as well as Lydia and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, marking the formal establishment of a new imperial polity under the Achaemenid dynasty. In the modern era, the Achaemenid Empire has been recognized for its imposition of a successful model of centralized, bureaucratic administration; its multicultural policy; building complex infrastructure, such as road systems and an organized postal system; the use of official languages acros ...
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Druze In Israel
Israeli Druze or Druze Israelis ( ar, الدروز الإسرائيليون; he, דְּרוּזִים יִשְׂרְאֵלִים) are an ethnoreligious minority among the Arab citizens of Israel. In 2019, there were 143,000 Druze people living within Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, comprising 1.6% of the total population of both the former and the latter. Although Druzism, their ethnic religion, originally developed out of Ismaʿilism (a branch of Shia Islam), Druze do not identify as Muslims. In 1957, the Israeli government designated Druze Israelis as a distinct ethnic community at the request of Druze communal leaders. Alongside the Jewish majority and the Circassian minority, the Druze minority is required by law to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, and members of the community have also attained top positions in Israeli politics and public service.
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Judeo-Persian
Judeo-Persian refers to both a group of Jewish dialects spoken by the Jews living in Iran and Judeo-Persian texts (written in Hebrew alphabet). As a collective term, Judeo-Persian refers to a number of Judeo-Iranian languages spoken by Jewish communities throughout the formerly extensive Persian Empire, including the Mountain and Bukharan Jewish communities. The speakers refer to their language as ''Fārsi''. Some non-Jews refer to it as "dzhidi" (also written as "zidi", "judi" or "jidi"), which means "Jewish" in a derogatory sense. Literature There is an extensive Judeo-Persian poetic religious literature, closely modeled on classical Persian poetry. The most famous poet was Mowlānā Shāhin-i Shirāzi (14th century CE), who composed epic versifications of parts of the Bible, such as the ''Musā-nāmah'' (an epic poem recounting the story of Moses); later poets composed lyric poetry of a Sufi cast. Much of this literature was collected around the beginning of the twentieth c ...
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Judeo-Arabic Languages
Judeo-Arabic dialects (, ; ; ) are ethnolects formerly spoken by Jews throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Under the ISO 639 international standard for language codes, Judeo-Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage under the code jrb, encompassing four languages: Judeo-Moroccan Arabic (aju), Judeo-Yemeni Arabic (jye), Judeo-Iraqi Arabic (yhd), and Judeo-Tripolitanian Arabic (yud). ''Judeo-Arabic'' can also refer to Classical Arabic written in the Hebrew script, particularly in the Middle Ages. Many significant Jewish works, including a number of religious writings by Saadia Gaon, Maimonides and Judah Halevi, were originally written in Judeo-Arabic, as this was the primary vernacular language of their authors. Characteristics The Arabic spoken by Jewish communities in the Arab world differed slightly from the Arabic of their non-Jewish neighbours. These differences were partly due to the incorporation of some words from Hebrew and other languages and partly geographical, ...
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Judaeo-Spanish
Judaeo-Spanish or Judeo-Spanish (autonym , Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew script: , Cyrillic script, Cyrillic: ), also known as Ladino, is a Romance languages, Romance language derived from Old Spanish language, Old Spanish. Originally spoken in Spain, and then after the Alhambra Decree, Edict of Expulsion spreading through the Ottoman Empire (the Balkans, Turkey, Western Asia, and North Africa) as well as France, Italy, Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Netherlands, Morocco, and Kingdom of England, England, it is today spoken mainly by Sephardi Jews, Sephardic Minority group, minorities in more than 30 countries, with most speakers residing in Israel. Although it has no official status in any country, it has been acknowledged as a minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, France, and Turkey. In 2017, it was formally recognised by the Real Academia Española, Royal Spanish Academy. The core vocabulary of Judaeo-Spanish is Old Spanish language, Old Spanish, and it has nume ...
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Jewish Languages
Jewish languages are the various languages and dialects that developed in Jewish communities in the diaspora. The original Jewish language is Hebrew, supplanted as the primary vernacular by Aramaic following the Babylonian exile. Jewish languages feature a syncretism of indigenous Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic with the languages of the local non-Jewish population. Ancient history Early Northwest Semitic (ENWS) materials are attested through the end of the Bronze Age—2350 to 1200 BCE. At this early state, Biblical Hebrew was not highly differentiated from the other Northwest Semitic languages ( Ugaritic and Amarna Canaanite), though noticeable differentiation did occur during the Iron Age (1200–540 BCE). Hebrew as a separate language developed during the latter half of the second millennium BCE between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an area known as Canaan. The earliest distinctively Hebrew writing yet discovered was found at Khirbet Q ...
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Abjad
An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introduced in 1990 by Peter T. Daniels. Other terms for the same concept include: partial phonemic script, segmentally linear defective phonographic script, consonantary, consonant writing, and consonantal alphabet.Amalia E. Gnanadesikan (2017) Towards a typology of phonemic scripts, Writing Systems Research, 9:1, 14-35, DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2017.1308239 "Daniels (1990, 1996a) proposes the name abjad for these scripts, and this term has gained considerable popularity. Other terms include partial phonemic script (Hill, 1967), segmentally linear defective phonographic script (Faber, 1992), consonantary (Trigger, 2004), consonant writing (Coulmas, 1989) and consonantal alphabet (Gnanadesikan, 2009; Healey, 1990). " Impure abja ...
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Ktav Ashuri
Ktav Ashuri ( he, כְּתָב אַשּׁוּרִי, ' "Assyrian script"; also Ashurit) is the traditional Hebrew language name of the Hebrew alphabet, used to write both Hebrew and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. It is also sometimes called the "square script", the term is used to distinguish the ''Ashuri'' script from the Paleo-Hebrew script. In halakha, tefillin (phylacteries) and mezuzot (door-post scripts) can only be written in Ashurit. Name ''Ktav Ashuri'' is the term used in the Talmud; the modern Hebrew term for the Hebrew alphabet is simply "Hebrew alphabet". Consequently, the term ''Ktav Ashuri'' refers primarily to a traditional calligraphic form of the alphabet used in writing the Torah., s.v. ''Megillah'' 1:8, p. 202note 20; '' Yadayim'' 4:5-6,note 6 However, the term ''Ashuri'' is often used in the Babylonian Talmud to refer to the contemporary "Hebrew alphabet", as opposed to the older Paleo-Hebrew script. The Talmud gives two opinions for why the script is c ...
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