Mendele Personal Notices & Announcements
May 10, 2012 To minimize wear and tear on the untershames, three requests: 1. Send time-sensitive notices well in advance. 2. Send material as plain text: no HTML, other coding, or attachments;and write MENDELE PERSONALS in the subject line. 3. Correspond directly with the person who or organization which has posted the notice, *not* with your ever-beleaguered untershames. ***NB: New mail system at Yale; formatting might be a ghastly mess.*** _______________________________________________________________________ From:”Ze'ev Clementson [email protected] Subject: Yiddish Bible iPhone/iPad/iPodTouch App: I would like to announce the availability of my Yiddish Bible iPhone/iPad/iPodTouch App. It is available on the Apple iTunes App Store (link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yiddishbible/id494049348?mt=8). If you do a search on the Apple iTunes App Store for "Bible", you will see the (literally) hundreds of Bible applications that are available. If you narrow your search to "Hebrew Bible" or "Jewish Bible", you will still get dozens of results. However if, prior to the release of my app, you had searched for "Yiddish Bible", you would not have seen a single Yiddish Bible application. Now, that is no longer the case - my Yiddish Bible app is available on the app store. With the ability to toggle between Yiddish-only and Yiddish/English, Yiddish/Transcription, Yiddish/Hebrew parallel formats and with a built-in Yiddish/English dictionary, it is also a very useful app for people who are either learning Yiddish or who are trying to improve their knowledge of Yiddish. This app is based on the Yehoash Yiddish translation of the Hebrew Bible and has the following features: 1. Bible: The Yiddish Bible is accessible in several different versions (Yiddish, Yiddish/English, Yiddish/Hebrew, and Yiddish/YIVO-transcription) and it is easy to switch between versions by pressing a button while viewing the Bible text. All versions are resident on the device and no Internet access is required to view the texts. The Yiddish text is based on the Yiddish translation done by Yehoash (Solomon Blumgarten) in the early part of the 20th century and has been updated to reflect current YIVO standards for Yiddish spelling and to correct some typographical errors. The Hebrew text is based on the Leningrad Codex and the English text is based on the original Jewish Publication Society (JPS) translation of 1917. The YIVO transcription text was programmatically generated by Refoyl Finkel. When reading the text, one can touch a Yiddish word and a pop-up definition of that word will be displayed (if no "exact" match for the word is found in the dictionary, the "closest match" definition will be displayed instead). In additon to a "Book"-based reading approach, it is possible to also toggle to a "Parashah"-based approach (a Parashah is the weekly synagogue Torah/Haftarah reading). 2. Words: This is useful for learning more about specific Yiddish words and for discovering related words. There are four different ways to learn more about words: 2.a. Words: By selecting the first two letters of the Yiddish word, a listing will be displayed of all Yiddish words that begin with those two letters. Initially, ranges of words will be displayed. When the user touches a range, all of the words in that range, along with a brief English translation of each word, will be displayed. This provides an extremely fast method to lookup words in the dictionary. The entire word dictionary is maintained on the device so no Internet access is required to display the Yiddish words and definitions. 2.b. X-Late: Displays the Google Translate web page (Internet access required) with "Detect Language" and "Yiddish" pre-selected as the source/target languages. Note: in order to enter Yiddish (or any) text correctly, the relevant keyboard needs to have been enabled in the iOS Settings application (under General/Keyboard/International Keyboards). 2.c. Dict: Displays PDF scans (Internet access required) of all of the pages of "Harkavy's Yiddish/English, English/Yiddish Dictionary" (1910 edition). This dictionary uses a somewhat Germanized orthography and is apparently more directed to Yiddish speakers rather than English speakers. The dictionary is accessed as part of this app due to it's historical significance and also because it is useful when reading classical Yiddish literature. 2.d. Search: This search facility searches the on-device word/definition list (not the Harkavy dictionary) for an English or Yiddish word/words or word fragment (you will need to enable the Hebrew keyboard in the iOS Settings app in order to enter a Yiddish word). Wildcards can also be used in the search - use '_' to match any single character and use '%' to match any number of characters. For example, 'wa%r' would return definitions that include either the word 'water' or the word 'wander' (as well as others). When using the Words tab functionality, "swipe right" and "swipe left" will allow the user to navigate back/forward through pages that were previously displayed. 3. Topics: There are links to key topics (over 200 people/places/things) in the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. One can access topics by: 3.a. Bible book: for example, one can select all topics for the book of Exodus. 3.b. "Meta" Topics: topics that deal with concepts that relate to the Yiddish Bible in general (e.g. - the Yiddish language). 3.c. All Topics: one can also toggle from a "Book"-based list of topics to an alphabetical list of all available topics. 4. Maps: There are maps of almost every location (over 1,000 locations) mentioned in the Yiddish Bible (the lattitude/longitude locations are based on data from the OpenBible.info site; however, the application does not access that site). It is possible to display multiple different locations on a map and to clear previously selected locations from a map. By selecting a location on the map and touching the "callout detail disclosure" symbol (the "right arrow"), one can see a listing of all verses in the Yiddish Bible that mention that location. One can access Maps by: 4.a. Bible book: for example, one can select maps for locations that are mentioned in the book of Exodus. 4.b. All Maps: one can also toggle from a "Book"-based list of locations to an alphabetical list of all available locations. Ze'ev Clementson ____________________________________________________________________ Please do not use the "reply" key when writing to Mendele. Instead, direct your mail as follows: Responses to Mendele Personal Notices & Announcements should be sent directly to the person whom or organization which posted the item. Material for posting in Mendele Personal Notices & announcements,typically ,announcements of events, commercial publications, and questions not of general interest to the membership,should be sent to: [email protected] (IMPORTANT! in the subject line write "Mendele Personal") Material for postings to Mendele Yiddish literature and language, i.e, inquiries and comments of a non-commercial or publicity nature:and likely to interest the membership in general, should be sent to [email protected] IMPORTANT: Please include your full name as you would like it to appear in your posting. No posting will appear without its author's name. Submissions to regular Mendele should not include personal email addresses, as responses will be posted for all to read. They must also include the author's name as you would like it to appear. In order to spare the shamosim time and effort, we request that contributors adhere, when applicable, as closely as possible to standard English punctuation, grammar, etc. and to the YIVO rules of transliteration into Latin letters. A guide to Romanization can be found at this site: http://www.yivoinstitute.org/about/index.php?tid=57&aid=275 All other messages should be sent to the shamosim at this address: [email protected] Mendele on the web: http://mendele.commons.yale.edu/ _______________________________________________ Mendele mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/mendele
