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Things you wanted to know about Hebrew but were afraid to ask
A Ivrit is from Ivri, one of the (rarer) Biblical names for Israelite. This word was
translated into Latin as 'Hebraicus'.
Ivrit came to be a common name for the Hebrew language in the Middle Ages -- we
don't know why -- but actually, most Jews in Eastern Europe 100 years ago would have
called Hebrew not Ivrit but Loshn Koydesh ('the holy tongue'). The use of the name Ivrit
for Modern Hebrew was in fact a loud political statement, to the effect that Hebrew was
no longer going to be a holy language of the synagogue and Cheder, but a secular
modern language.
A If by 'die out' you mean 'cease to be a native spoken language', this appears to have
happened some time in the second century CE -- but, as with most 'language death',
this was probably a gradual process. It wasn't that all Hebrew speakers were wiped out,
although no doubt the main center of spoken Hebrew, Judea, was decimated by the
Romans. Rather, the surviving speakers chose to adopt other languages as their main
tongue.
A No.
And let's get a few facts straight:
A No, but lots of them are. In fact, a word count would show that the majority of words
in an Israeli conversation are Biblical. Many others are based on ancient words, such as
'machshev' = computer, from the ancient verb 'chishev' = to calculate. Others are just
plain international: 'provokatsya', 'demokrati', 'internet'...