Hebrew language is besieged by imports

The Hebrew language survived more than 2,000 years of disuse but is now being undermined by imports from its Arab neighbours and the English of its closest ally, the United States.

Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, has added his voice to a campaign to protect Israel's mother tongue from becoming adulterated.

Visitors to an Israeli bar are likely to be greeted with 'Ahlan', an abbreviation of the Arabic greeting 'ahlan wahsahlan', which means welcome. When it is time to leave, they are likely to hear 'Yalla, bye', a combination of the Arabic for 'let's go' and the English goodbye.

But Israeli politicians and Hebrew academics are more concerned with the wholesale import of hundreds of English words and the use of English in business names.

Melli Polishuk-Bloch, a member of the Knesset who chairs its education committee, said she planned to introduce legislation to protect Hebrew from being diluted.

'I think we should speak in Hebrew and use Hebrew names for shops and businesses. We have to honour our language,' she said.

In recent years, Israeli businesses have taken to using English names to make them accessible to non-Israelis and Arabs.

Speaking at the first Hebrew language day, Sharon said: 'I don't understand why Israeli broadcasting networks call themselves foreign names like "Hot" and "Yes", and how that half-breed creature "yalla, bye" was created instead of the beautiful word "shalom".'

Hebrew is particularly vulnerable to foreign imports because it was modernised for daily use only as recently as the 20th century by Lithuanian-born Zionist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda.

With only 8,000 words in biblical Hebrew, Ben-Yehuda developed new words from Hebrew roots and imported others.

'The problem now is that English has become so dominant that it threatens to overwhelm minority languages,' explained Barak Dan, a researcher at the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Jerusalem set up to regulate the language and create new words. 'There was a need for the academy because simple words such as tomato and umbrella did not exist.'

Dan explained that the word 'shampoo' is generally used in Hebrew but the academy created the Hebrew word 'tachpif'.

'Virtually no one knows the new words. We are very bad at public relations,' he said. But he does cite one success of the academy. ' When I was young everyone used the word cassette in spite of the existence of the Hebrew word "caletit". Then, as if by magic in the 1990s, people adopted the new word. Now children would not recognise the word "cassette".'

Arabic was always going to feature heavily in the new Hebrew as it remains the dominant language in the Middle East and the two languages share the same roots. Apart from different scripts, they have many similarities. Ben and Bin mean 'son of' as in Osama bin Laden and David Ben-Gurion.

Arabic has become particularly popular in colloquial Hebrew and swear words.

Dan said that Ben-Yehuda would not have been offended by the adoption of Arabic terms, adding: 'He thought very highly of Arabic because it was so rich and close to Hebrew.'