Modern Hebrew or
Israeli Hebrew (
ʿivrít ḥadašá[h] - "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), generally referred to by speakers simply as
Hebrew (עברית
Ivrit), is the standard form of the
Hebrew language spoken today. Spoken in ancient times,
Hebrew, a
Canaanite language, was supplanted as the Jewish vernacular by the western dialect of Aramaic beginning in the third century BCE, though it continued to be used as a liturgical and literary language. It was revived as a spoken language in the 19th and 20th centuries and is one of the two official languages of Israel (along with
Levantine Arabic).