Old Hebrew
| Biblical Hebrew | |
|---|---|
| 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍𐤕 𐡊𐡍𐡏𐡍𐡕 ﬤנעניﬨ | |
| Pronunciation | [knɑ.ʕɑ.ˈnit] |
| Proto-Sinaitic script ('til 1700 BC) Proto-Canaanite script ('til 1050 BC) Phoenician script ('til 135 AD) Aramaic script ('til 264 BC) Samaritan (from 600 BC) Hebrew script | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | hbo |
Old Hebrew , also called Biblical Hebrew or Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of Hebrew, a language in the Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages that was spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea.
The term ʿiḇrîṯ "Hebrew" was not used for the language in the Hebrew Bible, which referred to it as שְֹפַת כְּנַעַן śəp̄aṯ kənaʿan "language of Canaan" or יְהוּדִית Yəhûḏîṯ, "Judean", but the term was used in Koine Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts.
Consonants
[change | change source]| colspan="2" | rowspan="2" | Bilabial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | rowspan="2" I Pharyngeal | Glottal | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Lateral | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Stop | voiceless | p | t | k | q | ʔ | |||||||||||||||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | ||||||||||||||||||
| emphatic | tˤ | Fricatives | voiceless | s | ɬ | ʃ | ħ | h | |||||||||||||
| voiced | z | ʕ | |||||||||||||||||||
| Approximants | w/ʋ | r | l | j | |||||||||||||||||
| Trill | r | ||||||||||||||||||||