Hebrew Electronic Translator
Hebrew (עִבְרִית, ‘Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and used for prayer or study in 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 it is spoken by the majority of the population. Hebrew is also spoken as a mother tongue by the Samaritans, though today fewer than a thousand Samaritans remain. As a foreign language it is studied mostly by Jews and students of Judaism and Israel, archeologists and linguists specializing in the Middle East and its civilisations and by theologians. The modern word "Hebrew" is derived from the word "Ibriy" which in turn is based upon the root "`abar" (עבּר) meaning "to cross over". The related name Eber, occurs in Genesis 10:21 and means "the one who traverses". In the Bible "Hebrew" is called יהודית because Judea was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation, late 8th century(Is 36, 2Kings 18). The core of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) is written in Classical Hebrew, and much of its present form is specifically the dialect of Biblical Hebrew that scholars believe flourished around the 6th century BCE, around the time of the Babylonian exile. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Ha-Qodesh (לשון הקודש), "The Holy Language", since ancient times.
