Thread: Jewish

Yes, obvioulsy the world changed alot during Hebrew's "hybernation".

They tried to use old Hebrew words to create the new ones. But there are lots of words from other languages in Hebrew, due to the fact that those arriving in Israel were from all over the world.

Regarding the spelling - Each Hebrew letter used to have it's own sound. Like in Modern Hebrew there are two letters that are prounounced as a T. However originally these had different sounds. I believe certain type of Jews, pronounce one as a Th sound, as this was it's original pronunciation or something.

Also the Hebrew vowels. When they are written there are many symbols that have the same sound. In Ancient Hebrew they all denoted a different sound or length, but in the Modern variety the length distinction dissapeared.

That's perfectly right. Moreover, there are two letters for "V" (bet and vav), two letters for "K" (kaf and kof) and for "S" (samekh and sin). The sound of ALEF disappeared (originally that was a glottal stop), and the sound of AIN mostly remains in speech of Israeli Arabs. Therefore the modern Hebrew abounds in vocalic vowel combinations where originally glottal consonants presented (like ME-OD, SHA-A etc.).