Language code: he

Technical information about ISO 639 language code he

The table below provides technical details for the Hebrew language, designated by the he code from the ISO 639-1 standard.

Code

he

Name

Official

Hebrew

Native

עברית

Family
Semitic
Scripts
Text direction

Right-to-Left

Plural rules

More info

Language varieties
Modern (Israeli) HebrewAshkenazi HebrewSephardi HebrewYemenite HebrewSamaritan Hebrew
Related languages
AramaicPhoenicianUgariticMoabiteArabic
Key facts
Revived from liturgical use to everyday speech in the late 19th–20th centuriesAlphabet has 22 consonantal letters written right-to-left, with optional vowel pointsWord formation is based on triconsonantal roots inserted into vocalic patternsLetters double as numerals in the gematria systemModern vocabulary regularly borrows and adapts terms from English, Russian and other languages
Sample phrase

שלום, מה שלומך?

Character encodings

ISO 8859-8, Windows 1255, UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32

Supported in Localizely

Hebrew belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family, more precisely to the Semitic subgroup. It is the official language of Israel and is written using the Hebrew alphabet. It is estimated that there are more than 8.3 million speakers worldwide.

Language presence globally

Speakers

8.3M

*The graph shows a rough estimate of Hebrew speakers in countries where it is an official or minority language.

Related locale codes

he-IL Hebrew (Israel)

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