Although multilingual Israel occupies a small territory, it can give odds to many superpowers in terms of the number of tourists visiting it annually. The official languages in Israel are Hebrew and Arabic, and announcements, street names, names of public transport stops and signs are usually duplicated in both.
Some statistics and facts
- A respectable number of languages from all over the world are spread on the territory of Israel.
- The most popular after Hebrew and Arabic in the Promised Land is Russian. About 20% of the country's inhabitants speak it.
- Emigrants in Israel also speak French and Ethiopian, Romanian and Polish, Yiddish and Hungarian.
- The number of Russian-language press and books published in Israel is close to that which appears in Hebrew and exceeds the circulation of English-language editions.
- Arabic, despite the status of the state language, in Israel is included in the school curriculum only as a foreign language.
Three thousand years of Hebrew history
Hebrew has a long history and was written and spoken already during the Second Temple period. With the beginning of the expulsion and resettlement of Jews around the world, Hebrew lost its status as a spoken language and became a sacred and ritual language for the Jews.
Hebrew is called a unique phenomenon in linguistics. He became dead, but was revived at the end of the 19th century thanks to the efforts of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, who devoted his life to the revival of the current state language of Israel. Today about 5 million people are explained in Hebrew.
Every fifth
Approximately 20% of Israel's population are Arabs, but their language, despite its state status, does not always have equal rights de facto. For example, street signs began to be duplicated in Arabic only after appealing to the country's Supreme Court in the 90s of the last century, but today most of them, like road signs, are made in both official languages of Israel.
Tourist notes
When traveling to Israel, do not worry about the possible language barrier and translation difficulties. Locals joke that if a Russian tourist gets lost in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, it is enough for him to ask loudly if someone around speaks Russian. In most cases, the answer will be yes. In other situations, there will certainly be Israelis around you who speak English. All famous sights, united by the country's Ministry of Tourism, have brochures and maps in Russian and English in information centers.
