We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Language and nation-building in Israel: Hebrew and its rivals.
- Authors
safran, William
- Abstract
The problem of language preceded the founding of Israel. In the nineteenth century, the emergence of political Zionism was accompanied by a revival of Hebrew. In the early years of Jewish resettlement in Palestine, Hebrew slowly emerged as the popular language, a compromise between the Yiddish spoken by Eastern European immigrants and the Arabic or Ladino current among many Middle Eastern Jews. After World War I, as educational institutions proliferated, the challenge of French and German as languages of instruction was blocked by teachers' strikes. With the establishment of the state and the massive influx of Jewish displaced persons, mostly speakers of Yiddish, that language, regarded as a potential threat to the primacy of Hebrew, was systematically fought by the country's political and cultural elite. Today, the position of Hebrew as the national language of Israel is secure. English, however, has been asserting its influence in an increasingly postindustrial and globalised society.
- Subjects
ISRAEL; ZIONISM; ANTHROPOLOGICAL linguistics; HEBREW language; ENGLISH language; JEWS; NATIONAL character; NATIONALISM; SOCIAL psychology
- Publication
Nations & Nationalism, 2005, Vol 11, Issue 1, p43
- ISSN
1354-5078
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1354-5078.2005.00191.x