Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T10:54:29.308Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Multilingualism in Israel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2009

Bernard Spolsky
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Israel's geographical position as a land bridge connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa, its resulting long history of conquest and reconquest, and its status as the point of focus of four major world religions (the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, and significant to Islam and Baha'i), all assure it a long tradition of complex and ever-changing multilingualism. By the beginning of the Common Era two thousand years ago, a pattern of triglossia had emerged, with Hebrew, Judeo-Aramaic, and Greek all playing meaningful roles (Spolsky 1983). This model of language organization became the norm for the Jewish people during most of their dispersion, with separate defined functions for three languages. Hebrew (actually Hebrew and Talmudic Aramaic) was used for religious and literacy purposes; a Jewish language like Yiddish, Judeo-French, Ladino, or Judeo-Arabic was used for most other community and home functions (Rabin 1981); and one or more “co-territorial vernaculars” was used for communication with non-Jews (Weinreich 1980).

Type
Country and Regional Surveys
Information
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics , Volume 17 , March 1997 , pp. 138 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

UNANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Amara, M. H. 1986. The integration of Hebrew and English lexical items into the Arabic spoken in an Arab village in Israel. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University. M.A. thesis.Google Scholar
Amara, M. H. 1988. Arabic diglossia: Conditions for learning the standard variety (in Arabic). Aljadid. 12.14–23.Google Scholar
Amara, M. H. 1991. Sociolinguistic aspects of variation and change: A study of the language spoken in an Arab village in Israel. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University. Ph.D. diss.Google Scholar
Amara, M. H. 1995. Hebrew and English lexical reflections of socio-political changes in Palestinian Arabic. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 16.165–172.Google Scholar
Atzmon, N. 1986. Study in Israel of Arabic language and culture—a proposed plan. Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Bachi, R. 1956. A statistical analysis of the revival of Hebrew in Israel. Scripta Hierosolymitana. 2.179–247.Google Scholar
Barkon, E. and Avinor, E.. 1995. Academic difficulties and early literacy deprivation: The case of Ethiopians in Israel. Language, Culture and Curriculum. 8.201–210.Google Scholar
Ben-Rafael, E., Olshtain, E. and Geist, I.. 1995. Aspects of identity and language acquisition among immigrants from the Commonwealth of Independent States. Jerusalem: Center for Research in Education, Hebrew University.Google Scholar
Birnbaum, S. A. 1979. Yiddish: A survey and a grammar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Blanc, H. 1968. The Israeli koine as an emergent national standard. In Fishman, J. A., Ferguson, C. A. and Das Gupta, J. (eds.) Language problems of developing nations. New York: Wiley. 237–251.Google Scholar
Chumaceiro, R. M. 1982. Language maintenance and use among Jerusalem Sephardim. International journal of the Sociology of Language. 37.25–39.Google Scholar
Cohen, I. 1918. The German attack on the Hebrew schools in Palestine. London: Jewish Chronicle and Jewish World. [19 pages.]Google Scholar
Cooper, R. L. 1984. A framework for the description of language spread: The case of Modern Hebrew. International Social Science Journal. 36.1.87–112.Google Scholar
Cooper, R. L. 1984. 1985: Fantasti! Israeli attitudes towards English. In Greenbaum, S. (ed.) The English language today. Oxford: Pergamon. 233–241.Google Scholar
Cooper, R. L. and Seckbach, F.. 1977. Economic incentives for the learning of a language of wider communication: A case study. In Fishman, J. A., Cooper, R. L. and Conrad, A. W. (eds.) The spread of English. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. 212–219.Google Scholar
Fellman, J. 1973a. Concerning the “revival” of the Hebrew language. Anthropological Linguistics. 15.250–257.Google Scholar
Fellman, J. 1973b. The revival of a classical tongue: Eliezer ben Yehuda and the modern Hebrew language. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, C. A. 1959. Diglossia. Word. 15.325–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finn, J. 1878. Stirring times, or records from Jerusalem consular chronicles of 1853–1856. [Translated by his wife.] London: C. Hegan and Paul.Google Scholar
Fisherman, H. 1972. The official languages of Israel: Their status in law and police attitudes and knowledge concerning them. Language Behavior Papers. 1.3–23.Google Scholar
Fishman, J. A. 1966. Language loyalty in the United States: The maintenance and perpetuation of non-English mother tongues by American ethnic and religious groups. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Fishman, J. A. 1980. Attracting a following to high-culture functions for a language of everyday life: The role of the Tshernovits Conference in the ‘Rise of Yiddish’. Internationaljournal of the Sociology of Language. 24.43–73.Google Scholar
Fishman, J. A. 1991a. The Hebraist response to the Tschernovits Conference. In Kaye, A. S. (ed.) Semitic studies in honor of Wolf Leslau on the occasion of his eighty-fifth birthday. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. 437–448.Google Scholar
Fishman, J. A. 1991b. Yiddish: turning to life. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fishman, J. A. and Fishman, D. E.. 1978. Yiddish in Israel: A case study of efforts to revise a monocentric language policy. In Fishman, J. A. (ed.) Advances in the study of societal multilingualism. The Hague: Mouton. 185–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gitelman, Z. 1982. Becoming Israelis: Political resocialization of Soviet and American immigrants. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Glinert, L. 1995. Language policy towards recent Soviet immigrants in Israel. Paper read at International Symposium on Language Policy, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, 1995.Google Scholar
Fishman, J. A. 1996. “We never changed our language”: Attitudes to Yiddish acquisition among Hasidic educators in Britain. Osnabrucker Beitrage zur Sprachtheorie.Google Scholar
Hallel, M. and Spolsky, B.. 1993. The teaching of additional languages in Israel. In Grabe, W., et al. (eds.) Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 13. Issues in second language teaching and learning. New York: Cambridge University Press. 37–49.Google Scholar
Harris, T. K. 1982a. Editor's note: The name of the language of the Eastern Sephardim. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 37.5.Google Scholar
Harris, T. K. 1982b. Reasons for the decline of Judeo-Spanish. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 37.71–97.Google Scholar
Horowitz, N. 1988. History of English curriculum in Israel. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University. M.A. thesis.Google Scholar
Horowitz, T. R. 1986. Between two worlds: Children from the Soviet Union in Israel. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Hyamson, A. M. (ed.) 1939. The British consulate in Jerusalem in relation to the Jews of Palestine 1838–1914. Parti: 1838–1861. London: Edward Goldston for the Jewish Historical Society of England.Google Scholar
Koplewitz, I.1992. Arabic in Israel: The sociolinguistic situation of Israel's linguistic minority. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 98.29–66.Google Scholar
Kosover, M. 1966. Arabic elements in Palestinian Yiddish: The old Ashkenazic Jewish community in Palestine, its history and its language. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass.Google Scholar
Kraemer, R. 1993. Social psychological factors related to the study of Arabic among Israeli high school students: A test of Gardner's socioeducational model. Studies in Second Language Acquisition. 15.83–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreindler, I., Bensoussan, M., Avinor, E. and Bram, C.. 1995. Circassian Israelis: Multilingualism as a way of life. Language, Culture and Curriculum. 8.149–162.Google Scholar
Mandel, G. 1993. Why did Ben-Yehuda suggest the revival of spoken Hebrew? In Glinert, L. (ed.) Hebrew in Ashkenaz. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 193–207.Google Scholar
Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport. 1995. Policy for language education in Israel (in Hebrew.) Jerusalem: Office of the Director General.Google Scholar
Ministry of Education 1996. Policy for language education in Israel (in Hebrew). Jerusalem: Office of the Director-General.Google Scholar
Moskovitch, V. 1990. Russian-Hebrew language contacts. In Guri, Y. (ed.) The revival of the Hebrew language. Jerusalem: Aliya. 104–124.Google Scholar
Nadel, E. and Fishman, J. A.. 1977. English in Israel. In Fishman, J. A., Cooper, R. L. and Conrad, A. W. (eds.) The spread of English. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. 137–167.Google Scholar
Nahir, M. 1988. Language planning and language acquisition: The “Great Leap” in the Hebrew revival. In Paulston, C. B. (ed.) International handbook of bilingualism and bilingual education. New York: Greenwood Press. 275–295.Google Scholar
Pilowsky, A. L. 1985. Yiddish alongside the revival of Hebrew: Public polemics on the status of Yiddish in Eretz Israel, 1907–1929. In Fishman, J. A. (ed.) Readings in the sociology of Jewish languages. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Rabin, C. 1981. What constitutes a Jewish language? International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 30.19–28.Google Scholar
Rabin, H. 1973. A short history of the Hebrew language. Jerusalem: Jewish Agency.Google Scholar
Rosenbaum, Y., Nadel, E., Cooper, R. L. and Fishman, J. A.. 1977. English on Keren Kayemet Street. In Fishman, J. A., Cooper, R. L. and Conrad, A. W. (eds.) The Spread of English. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. 179–196.Google Scholar
Saulson, S. B. (ed.) 1979. Institutionalized language planning. The Hague: Mouton. [Studies in the Sociology of Language.]Google Scholar
Shohamy, E. 1994. Issues in language planning in Israel: Language and ideology. In Lambert, R. D. (ed.) Language planning around the world: Contexts and systematic change. Washington DC: National Foreign Language Center. 131–142.Google Scholar
Spolsky, B. 1983. Triglossia and literacy in Jewish Palestine of the First Century. Internationaljournal of the Sociology of Language. 42. 95–110.Google Scholar
Spolsky, B. 1993. Language conflict in Jerusalem—1880 and 1980. In Jahr, E. H. (ed.) Language conflict and language planning. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 179–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spolsky, B. 1994. The situation of Arabic in Israel. In Suleiman, Y. (ed.) Arabic sociolinguistics: Issues and perspectives. Richmond, UK: Curzon Press. 227–236.Google Scholar
Spolsky, B. 1996a. English in Israel after independence. In Fishman, J. A., Rubal-Lopez, A. and Conrad, A. W. (eds.) Post-imperial English. Berlin: Mouton.Google Scholar
Spolsky, B. 1996b. Prolegomena to an Israeli language policy. In Hickey, T. and Williams, J. (eds.) Language, education and society in a changing world. Dublin and Clevedon: IRAAL/Multilingual Matters. 45–53.Google Scholar
Spolsky, B. and Amara, M.. 1986. The diffusion and integration of Hebrew and English lexical items in the spoken Arabic of an Israeli village. Anthropological Linguistics. 28.43–54.Google Scholar
Spolsky, B. 1996. Politics and language change: The sociolinguistic reflexes of the division of a Palestinian village. In Eliasson, S. and Jahr, E. H. (eds.) Studies in memory of Einar Haugen. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Spolsky, B. and Shohamy, E.. 1996. National profile of language education: Israel. In Dickson, P. and Cumming, A. (eds.) Profiles of language education in 25 countries. London: National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) for the IEA.Google Scholar
Stern, A. 1991. Educational policy towards the Circassian minority in Israel. In Jaspaert, K. and Kroon, S. (eds.) Ethnic minority languages and education. Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger. 175–184Google Scholar
Wahl, R. 1996. German language policy in 19th century Palestine. Ramat-Gan: BarIlan University. M.A. thesis.Google Scholar
Webber, J. 1979. The status of English as a lingua franca in contemporary Jerusalem. Oxford: Oxford University. D.Phil, diss.Google Scholar
Weinreich, M. 1980. History of the Yiddish language. [Trans, by Fishman, J. A. and Noble, S..] Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Zlatopolsky, Y. and Guri, Y.. 1995. Russian language in Israel. Russian Language Abroad. 4.Google Scholar