Languages of Israel

A sign of trilingual traffic in Hebrew, Arabic and English.

The official language of Israel is Hebrew. The Arabic language has a special status. These are also the most widely spoken languages (72% of the population speak Hebrew and 21% speak Arabic). Arabic is spoken by Israeli Arabs and by many of the Jews of Mizrahi origin. The other most widely spoken language is Russian, the mother tongue of more than a million immigrants from the territories of the former Soviet Union. English is a language of central importance in diplomatic, commercial, tourist and academic affairs. It is also the mother tongue of tens of thousands of immigrants from English-speaking countries.

The Spanish language is spoken by some 100,000 members of the Sephardic communities who preserve a variety, Judeo-Spanish, with features from the 16th century. Spanish is also spoken by the more than 100,000 immigrants of Spanish or Hispanic American origin. Other very common languages are French, spoken by immigrants from France and its former colonies, and Amharic, the main language of immigrant Jews from Ethiopia.

Most Israelis are fluent in two to three languages: Hebrew, English plus their or their parents' mother tongue (if not one of the two already mentioned).