Professional Hebrew Translation Service
Hebrew language belongs to the Canaanite language branch under the Afro-Asiatic family of languages. Modern Hebrew has over seven million speakers a majority of whom live in Israel. It also serves as the official language of Israel along with Arabic.
Tomedes offers professional Hebrew translation services to and from a large number of languages including Hebrew to English, and English to Hebrew translation. All our Hebrew translators are well qualified and experienced. We also have a large number of native Hebrew translators who have grown up with the language before studying it for translation work. They guarantee the most authentic language translation possible.
- Hebrew is a historic language which has evolved through various stages, these are –
- Classical Hebrew – This was popular in ancient Israel and was spoken in many overlapping dialects – Archaic Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew, Late Biblical Hebrew, Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew (found in the Talmud).
- Medieval Hebrew – The most important dialect of Medieval Hebrew was Tiberian or Masoretic Hebrew.
- Modern Israeli Hebrew – The standardized Hebrew language used in the present day.
- Hebrew language has been spoken using the following pronunciation systems –
- Ashkenazi Hebrew – This was influenced by Yiddish and has its roots in Central and Eastern Europe. It is used at present by Orthodox Jewish communities including the Haredi, and in Ashkenazi Jewish religious services.
- Sephardi Hebrew – This pronunciation system is used by the Portuguese and Spanish Jews living in the countries that were earlier a part of the erstwhile Ottoman Empire. It was influenced by the Ladino language and serves as the basis for Hebrew phonology employed by Israeli speakers.
- Mizrahi (Oriental) Hebrew – Refers to a group of dialects that are used by Jews living in different parts of Arab. These dialects may have been influenced by Arabic and Aramaic languages.
- The Hebrew dialects used currently are Modern Israeli Hebrew, Mizrahi Hebrew or Oriental Hebrew, Sephardi Hebrew and Yemenite Hebrew.
- The modern standardized form of Hebrew was developed Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. He based it on Sephardi Hebrew pronunciation and Mishnaic spelling system. But over the years it has also included Ashkenazi Hebrew phonology in certain areas. This happened because Modern Hebrew’s earliest speakers were native Yiddish speakers.
- Modern Hebrew, as used in Israel includes loan words from many languages, the significant ones being Yiddish, Aramaic, Arabic, Russian and English.
- Modern Hebrew is written with the Hebrew alphabet comprising of 22 letters, in the right to left direction. There are two types of scripts in popular usage, one is the square letter form called Ashurit, based on the Aramaic script and the other is the cursive Hebrew script, which is used in handwriting.