Hebrew language West Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, although the language was not referred to by the name Hebrew in the Tanakh.^{[note 2]} The earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE.^[11] Today, Hebrew is spoken by a total of 9 million people worldwide.

In the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit (יהודית) because Judah (Yәhuda) was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation (late 8th century BCE (Is 36, 2 Kings 18)). In Isaiah 19:18 it is called the "Language of Canaan" (שפת כנען).

In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago.^[19][20] Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said that the inscription was “proto-Canaanite" but cautioned that, "The differentiation between the scripts, and between the languages themselves in that period, remains unclear,” and suggested that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far.^[21]