what language did jewish people speak?
Hebrew Language
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 For over sixteen centuries Hebrew was used almost exclusively as a liturgical language , and as the language in which most books had been written on Judaism , with a few speaking only Hebrew on the Sabbath . Hebrew was revived as a spoken language by Eliezer ben Yehuda , who arrived in Palestine in 1881 . It had not been used as a mother tongue since Tannaic times . Modern Hebrew is now one of the two official languages of the State of Israel along with Modern Standard Arabic . 

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 Biblical Hebrew eventually developed into Mishnaic Hebrew , which was spoken until the second century CE . 

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 Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism ( termed lashon ha @-@ kodesh , " the holy tongue " ) , the language in which most of the Hebrew scriptures ( Tanakh ) were composed , and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries . By the 5th century BCE , Aramaic , a closely related tongue , joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea . By the 3rd century BCE , some Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek . Others , such as in the Jewish communities of Babylonia , were speaking Hebrew and Aramaic , the languages of the Babylonian Talmud . These languages were also used by the Jews of Israel at that time . 

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 Despite efforts to revive Hebrew as the national language of the Jewish people , knowledge of the language is not commonly possessed by Jews worldwide and English has emerged as the lingua franca of the Jewish diaspora . Although many Jews once had sufficient knowledge of Hebrew to study the classic literature , and Jewish languages like Yiddish and Ladino were commonly used as recently as the early 20th century , most Jews lack such knowledge today and English has by and large superseded most Jewish vernaculars . The three most commonly spoken languages among Jews today are Hebrew , English , and Russian . Some Romance languages , particularly French and Spanish , are also widely used . Yiddish has been spoken by more Jews in history than any other language , but it is far less used today following the Holocaust and the adoption of Modern Hebrew by the Zionist movement and the State of Israel . In some places , the mother language of the Jewish community differs from that of the general population or the dominant group . For example , in Quebec , the Ashkenazic majority has adopted English , while the Sephardic minority uses French as its primary language . Similarly , South African Jews adopted English rather than Afrikaans . Due to both Czarist and Soviet policies , Russian has superseded Yiddish as the language of Russian Jews , but these policies have also affected neighboring communities . Today , Russian is the first language for many Jewish communities in a number of Post @-@ Soviet states , such as Ukraine and Uzbekistan , as well as for Ashkenazic Jews in Azerbaijan , Georgia , and Tajikistan . Although communities in North Africa today are small and dwindling , Jews there had shifted from a multilingual group to a monolingual one ( or nearly so ) , speaking French in Algeria , Morocco , and the city of Tunis , while most North Africans continue to use Arabic as their mother tongue . 

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 For centuries , Jews worldwide have spoken the local or dominant languages of the regions they migrated to , often developing distinctive dialectal forms or branches that became independent languages . Yiddish is the Judæo @-@ German language developed by Ashkenazi Jews who migrated to Central Europe . Ladino is the Judæo @-@ Spanish language developed by Sephardic Jews who migrated to the Iberian peninsula . Due to many factors , including the impact of the Holocaust on European Jewry , the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries , and widespread emigration from other Jewish communities around the world , ancient and distinct Jewish languages of several communities , including Judæo @-@ Georgian , Judæo @-@ Arabic , Judæo @-@ Berber , Krymchak , Judæo @-@ Malayalam and many others , have largely fallen out of use . 
