Mishnaic Hebrew is any of the
Hebrew dialects found in the
Talmud, except for direct quotations from the Hebrew Bible. The dialects can be further sub-divided into Mishnaic Hebrew proper (also called
Tannaitic Hebrew, Early Rabbinic Hebrew, or
Mishnaic Hebrew I), which was a
spoken language, and
Amoraic Hebrew (also called Late Rabbinic Hebrew or Mishnaic Hebrew II), which was a
literary language only.