Revitalizacija hebrejskog jezika: sociolingvistički pristup uspešnoj jezičkoj revitalizaciji
Revitalization of Hebrew: a sociolinguistic approach to successful language revitalization

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents the sociolinguistic approach to revitalization of Hebrew as the most successful example of language revitalization. In spite of the multilingualism that has always been present in the area where the State of Israel is today and in this region in general, Hebrew managed to gain the dominant status as an official language of Jewish people and to become the most spoken language among Jewish communities. This theoretical investigation involves a selective overview of information on the process of revitalization of the Hebrew language in a specific social, historical, economic and cultural context. This paper focuses on the issues related to linguistic heterogeneity and national identity, identification with the ancestral language that one does not understand or speak but can feel a spiritual connection with, multilingualism of Jewish society and struggle for achieving the status of an official language of all Jews, as well as on sociolinguistic factors crucial for superiority and domination of Hebrew over the other languages.

• Details
• Contents