Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 4.405 May 2, 1995 1) Introduction (Barbara Rosen) 2) Introduction (Shimen Kass) 3) Introduction (Yankel Sklansky) 4) Yiddish on cd-rom (Harry Katz) 5) Oyf yidish ken men alts ton (Leybl Botvinik) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 11:05:52 -0400 (EDT) From: blrosen@umich.edu Subject: Introduction I'm a new "member" of Mendele and want to introduce myself. My name is Barbara Rosen (blrosen@umich.edu) and I'm the Judaica cataloguer at the University of Michigan. I'm really enjoying Mendele a lot so, a sheynem dank!! Barbara Rosen 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 01 May 1995 16:49:32 EDT From: kass@umbsky.cc.umb.edu Subject: Introduction I am a professor of mathematics at the Univ. of Massachusetts in Boston and I grew up in Brighton Beach, the first child of an immigrant family (Bessarabia & Minsk). Yiddish was my primary language until kindergarten. After coming to Brookline from Hyde Park, Chicago, where we lived for 14 years and raised two children, I began attending Rabbi Ben Zion Gold's Yiddish class at Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel. In the summers of '85 and '86 I studied Yiddish in the Oxford Yiddish Summer Program, under two superb teachers: Dovid Katz and Itzak Niborski . I published an article in the June 1986 Packentrager describing and reflecting on the experience. Thereafter, two times I was fortunate to be able to attend Niborski's Sunday seminar in Paris, which starts at 10 in the morning and ends at five. Something like the Boston Marathon. Through the Albert E. Marks Charitable Trust, a family foundation, my wife Judith and I have been supporting a series of talks in Yiddish at the Boston Workmen's Circle (1782 Beacon Street). The seventh and last speaker this year is Rakhmiel Peltz, Director of Yiddish Studies at Columbia University. The date is Sunday, June 18 at 2.30. The title is: "Yiddish and Jewish Nationalism in the Early 20th Century: The Case of Ber Boroknov". All are welcome. Shimen Kass 3)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 01 May 1995 22:59:36 -0700 From: sklansky@newport.ece.uci.edu Subject: Introduction My name is Jack Sklansky. I grew up in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn during the thirties. At that time and place, at least four Yiddish newspapers were published. My father read one of them, chosen somewhat arbitrarily, each day. He taught me to read them. Until the age of 6, Yiddish was my primary tongue. But, sorry to say, I lost most of my fluency in it as I grew older. I am a semi-retired Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering living in Newport Beach, California -- which is a great cultural distance from the Yiddishkeit of my youth. So it is with great pleasure and gratitude that I sense a wonderful renewal of the Yiddish language and culture of my parents and their ancestors in Belarus and Ukraine. A hartziken dank zu mendele. Jack ("Yankel") Sklansky 4)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 1 May 1995 12:03:07 -0600 (MDT) From: hkatz@earth.usa.net Subject: Yiddish on cd-rom I have recently been pondering this very same question. In fact, I have been pondering for a long time the question of digitizing Yiddish for computer access. A related problem is adapting current scanner technology to recognize and correctly scan Yiddish text into the computer. I believe there is such equipment available for Hebrew from the Davka Corporation. Besides the purely computer-related technical questions, there are business and legal questions to consider. Copyright works cannot be published on cd-rom without express permission of the copyright holders. To put out a cd-rom, one would need to track down the copyright owners and work out contracts with them. If there is anyone on Mendele who would be interested in pursuing this further, I would be glad to hear from them. If we can round up the necessary technical expertise to actually proceed with such a project, I would be glad to act as a coordinator or project leader. I suggest that interested parties contact me directly at rather than clutter up Mendele. Naturally, anyone wishing to discuss the topic further, rather than volunteering, should reply to Mendele. Harry Katz 5)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 May 95 17:58:04 IDT From: leybl@telecomm.tadiran.co.il Subject: Oyf yidish ken men alts ton oykh diskutirn tekhnologie. es ken gut zayn, az undzere mendele khaveyrim felt oys di neytike vokabular tsu kenen zikh oysdrikn vegn tekhnologishe temes oyf yidish. emes, es felt oys oyf yidish a haynttsaytiker reshime verter farn oysdrikn zikh. hob ikh far aykh ale an eytse. ikh ze oft, in di englishe tekstn git men iber epes a vort tsi a vertl (oysdruk) oyf yidish. amol iz dos tsulibn kheyn, un amol iz take shver oyf english oysdrikn a gedank vegn a yidisher zakh. iberhoypt geshet dos ven di kop trakht memeyle oyf yidish, khotsh shraybn shraybt men oyf english. (dakht zikh, az azoy hot zikh oykh antviklt yidish: geredt hot men daytsh, nor baym oysdrikn 'yidishe' gedanken, hot men arayngehakt loshn koydesh un arameish ... ober nit dos bin ikh oysn). mayn eytse iz aza: shraybn oyf yidish, un dort vu es felt dos vort, gebn es oyf english. lemoshl: ikh hob geefnt a 'file' un oyf im adurkhgefirt a 'search'. oder rikhtiker: ikh hob geefnt a (komputer-) teke un oyf ir adurkhgefirt a zukhung/durkhzukh. derloybt mir, deriber, aykh tsu helfn mit der vayterdiker iberzetsung fun a tekst vos iz dershinen in V4.401. ir vet mir moykhl zayn oyb dos iz nit pinktlekh vort far vort: ikh bin zikh meshayer, az men ken goyver zayn oyf di tekhnishe problemen. di finantsiele problem iz mistome a groyse. ikh ken zikh forshteln vunderlekhe meglekhkeytn. a verterbukh oyf cd-rom ken zayn tzvey-shprakhik, dray- shprakhik, u.az.v. (un azoy vayter), un es darf nor zayn eyne aza komputer- teke {=file}. di teke ken vern adurkhgekukt tsu gefinen a yedn vort, afile in di definitsies un iberzetsungen. aza teke ken farmogn etlekhe romanizatsie formen, oyb neytik (oder nutslekh). zukhungen kenen vern adurkhgefirt fun english tsu/oyf yidish, yidish tsu/oyf english, oder vos ir vilt. gehilf tekes far gramatikalishe klolim, loytn kontekst, kenen vern antviklt un tsugegebn. dos iz yene arbet! ober vos fara gehilf dos ken zayn say far onheybers, say far veteranen. eyn cd-rom ken farmogn/anthaltn 650 megabis fun informatsie. dos iz genug oyf an entsiklopedie mit bilder, vi fun Funk un Wagnall. on bilder, volt es gekent araynnemen der ekvivalent fun an erekh 40 tsi 50 mamoshesdike bender. leybl botvinik netanya ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 4.405 Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a meaningful Subject: line 2. 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