How close are the languages of Hebrew and Arabic?

Question

I know the races aren't very close, but are the languages pretty close? Kind of like Latin, Spanish, French, and other European languages?

Answer 1

Hebrew (עִבְרִית or עברית, ‘Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Jewish communities around the world. In Israel, it is the de facto language of the state and the people, as well as being one of the two official languages (together with Arabic), and is spoken by an overwhelming majority of the population.

The Arabic language (Arabic: اللغة العربية‎ ​ translit: al-lughah al-ʻarabiyyah), or simply Arabic (Arabic: عربي‎ ​ translit: ‘arabī), is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic.

Answer 2

it is close in the way the sentences are constructed in both languages. also the way it is written (right to left) and also in the way the tow languages are handling numbers.
other than that there are some common words or very similar ones. i can not say that someone speaking fluent Arabic will understand Hebrew if he will not study it first, and vice verse.
about the history of the development of both languages, there is a complete article here among other answers.

Answer 3

Both languages are Semitic, just like the people.

Hebrew and Arabic share loads of similar words and roots, similar syntactic structures and dictions. Although one's language is not understandable to the other, it is much easier for Hebrew speakers to learn Arabic than, let's say, English speakers, and vice versa.

It is sort of like the difference between Spanish and French, or Italian (all three of them are Romance languages).

Answer 4

Taivo and tasneem gave a very nice and detailed answer, and yotg gave an answer from his own experience. I can add nothing except that as an Arabic speaker, I feel like yeah, I can understand if I concentrate more, Hebrew sounds familiar to Arabic speakers, and Hebrew names sounds like Arabic.

For the race, the race is very close (with Jews from Israeili origin (bano-Israeil) not others who converted to Jaudism).

Answer 5

Arabic and Hebrew are closely related. They are both part of the Central Semitic group of Semitic languages. Their common ancestor was probably spoken about 4000 years ago in Arabia. That time depth makes them more distantly related than the Germanic family of languages (common ancestor about 2500-3000 years ago), but not so distantly related as the Indo-European family (common ancestor about 6000 years ago). Aramaic and Hebrew are more closely related to one another (common ancestor about 3000 years ago). The Romance subgroup of Italic (those languages descended from Latin--French, Italian, Spanish, etc.) has a time-depth of about 2000 years, but the Italic family (Latin, Oscan, Umbrian) has a time depth of about 3500 years, so it is much closer to the amount of difference between Arabic and Hebrew.

AndreyV and Blazer_Damn are completely wrong. English and Swahili are unrelated, of course, but Arabic and Hebrew are more closely related than English and Hindi or English and Russian, but not so closely related as English and German or French and Italian.

Answer 6

They are close -- they both belong to the Semitic language family. Your analogy with European languages is accurate.

Answer 7

They're both Semitic. Same thing, basically.

Answer 8

I find one link about Greek:
http://www.grecoreport.com/Jewish%20Symbols_are_Greek.htm

Answer 9

they r not close at all!