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Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was one of the leading figures in reviving Hebrew as an everyday spoken language. From the 1880s in Ottoman Palestine, he promoted it at home, in his newspapers, in schools and in a large dictionary, as new Hebrew-speaking communities formed.

Linguistic history

The story behind the card

Hebrew had continued for centuries in prayer, scholarship and writing, but for a long time it was nobody's everyday mother tongue. Ben-Yehuda, who settled in Jerusalem in 1881, insisted that his household speak only Hebrew, and his son Itamar is often described as the first native speaker of modern Hebrew. He spent decades compiling a large dictionary of ancient and modern Hebrew, coining many new words for modern life along the way. The revival itself, though, was a collective effort by teachers, writers, immigrants and new schools in Ottoman and later British-ruled Palestine, not the work of one household alone.

Türkçe oku

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, İbraniceyi yeniden gündelik konuşma dili hâline getiren hareketin önde gelen isimlerinden biriydi. 1880'lerden itibaren Osmanlı yönetimindeki Filistin'de, İbranice konuşan yeni topluluklar oluşurken bu dili evinde, çıkardığı gazetelerde, okullarda ve hazırladığı büyük sözlükte yaşattı.

İbranice yüzyıllar boyunca duada, bilimsel çalışmalarda ve yazıda yaşamayı sürdürdü, ama uzun zaman kimsenin gündelik ana dili değildi. 1881'de Kudüs'e yerleşen Ben-Yehuda, evinde yalnızca İbranice konuşulmasında ısrar etti; oğlu Itamar çoğu zaman modern İbraniceyi ana dili olarak konuşan ilk kişi diye anılır. Onlarca yılını eski ve yeni İbraniceyi kapsayan büyük bir sözlük hazırlamaya verdi ve bu sırada gündelik hayat için pek çok yeni sözcük türetti. Ama dilin canlanması tek bir evin işi değildi; Osmanlı ve ardından İngiliz yönetimindeki Filistin'de öğretmenlerin, yazarların, göçmenlerin ve yeni okulların ortak çabasıydı.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda

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Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was one of the leading figures in reviving Hebrew as an everyday spoken language. From the 1880s in Ottoman Palestine, he promoted it at home, in his newspapers, in schools and in a large dictionary, as new Hebrew-speaking communities formed.

The story behind the card

Sources and further reading

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