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typed in 'hebrew':

got inaccurate number of speakers, told it is spoken primarily in poland and turkey.




And Yiddish (as opposed to "Eastern Yiddish" and "Western Yiddish") has "99,999,999" speakers in .... "Sweden"!


Remember that's the Unesco who wrote this, and they have an anti-Zionist political skew.

They make a point of separating "Modern Hebrew" from "Hebrew".


They're also separating "Chaouia of the Aures in Algeria" https://en.wal.unesco.org/countries/algeria/languages/chaoui... from "Chaouia of the Aures in Algeria" https://en.wal.unesco.org/countries/algeria/languages/chaoui... so I don't think any political skew is involved at all, their data is just a mess.


Hebrew is a much broader linguistic phenomenon than just modern Hebrew. Hebrew existed as a spoken language thousands of years ago and has existed continuously since then in many different forms in different Jewish communities primarily as a liturgical language.

Modern Hebrew (or probably “Israeli Hebrew” would be more accurate) was then constituted as a vernacular fairly recently as part of the Zionist project of creating a new national identity, distinct from the existing identities of the Jewish populations would emigrated to Israel.


They also separate Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern Greek. Is that a political agenda too?




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