From: PXP111@psuvm.psu.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.polish,soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Languages, Dictionaries and Education
Date: 31 Jul 92 03:07:46 GMT
Organization: Penn State University


Here is some bit of information that I received and may interest fellow
netters... Actually some of them may even be able to check it out:
                                                     :::::

> THE OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC DICTIONARY FUND:
> WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE PART IN COMPLETION OF A UNIQUE WORK OF INTER-
> NATIONAL IMPORTANCE?
>
> WE NEED YOUR HELP!
>
> For almost  half  a century our  best  experts  in the fields of  Old
> Church Slavonic and literature in cooperation with classical philolo-
> gists,Germanists, Russian scholars, theologians and other specialists
> have been working on the compilation of an academic Dictionary of Old
> Church Slavonic (Lexicon linguae palaeoslovenicae,Prague, from 1958).
> This dictionary provides a lexicon of the language into which the Ho-
> ly  Bible  was  translated  and thus became instrumental in spreading
> Christianity.  As a result of this language the Slavs became recogni-
> zed as one of the cultured nations of Europe. The dictionary is fini-
> shed, but means for its printing are lacking!
>   OLD SLAVS HAD REACHED EUROPE BY THE 9TH CENTURY!
>       HELP US TO REMIND EUROPE - AND OURSELVES! - OF THIS FACT.
> More than  2,700  pages  have  already  been printed.  Along with Old
> Church  Slavonic  vocabulary  there are also  Czech, Russian, German,
> Greek,  Latin  and  Hebrew  equivalents.
>
> THERE ARE  LESS  THAN  400  PAGES  STILL  TO  BE PRINTED  AND  THEY'D
> COST $60,000.  The type  setting is very demanding, because different
> alphabets must be used -  Cyrillic, Roman, Greek and Hebrew.  Some of
> the plates already set and ready for printing are in  danger of being
> broken down. Contributions to help completion of printing of THE DIC-
> TIONARY OF OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC can be sent to the accounts below:
>  1.  Foreign currency account - KB Prague: 34833-1183054-021
>  2.  Czechoslovak crown account PRAGOBANK Prague: 638-100/1600
> Contact address: Pavla FOGLOVA   Main director of the Fund
>                  Polska 50     779 00 Olomouc     Czechoslovakia
>
> Thank you for your help!

If the above is true it is a really worthy/valuable effort. What a pity
for such an opus to remain half-finished!  The Slavs, the World deserve
such a 3,100-page volume at least...

On a relevant issue, as I wrote 2 days ago in the discussion over Mace-
donia, the Greek Literature from Homeros to Ioannis Chressostomos  (6th
ce A.D.)  -around 20,000 volumes- is already compiled in the "Thesaurus
Linguae Grecae" which may also be accessed in the revolutionary digital
form: The famous "Ivykos"  Compact Disk and Program  (after the name of
the ancient Greek poet).

The current stage of this task is the "electronic" transferring/storing
of texts from the Holy Fathers (6th ce A.D.) to the Byzantine Anna Com-
neni etc (11th ce A.D.).  The next stage then will take us to Gennadios
and Bessarion (another 4-century span covered)...

From what I know the Latin language has a  similar Data Bank on classi-
cal studies & literature.  The results of the first stage there  may be
published/accessible in the near future as well (probably from Munich).
The price of these PC-diskettes may be reasonably close to the existing
Greek one: $ 300.00 for a 5 years rent per individual, or $ 500.00  per
institution. The $ 10,000 to purchase may seem... quite a price but one
can always resort to the University of California in Irvine, the compu-
ter center of the Archaeological Institute of Greece,the two systems of
the Gennadios Library of Greece, the two systems in the American School
of Classical Studies in Greece  etc... < Actually, only few may want to
purchase these discs, for even M.Ventis's uncoded, earlier Greek Linear
Script II may be added soon..with the contents of the written word from
the 15th ce B.C.>

Of course several other detailed editions exist in BOTH these languages
but this does not mean that we should wait  until THEY are completed...
A serious, modern step in the Slavic literature must also be done.  (No
"diminishing" of Juraj Krizanic's hybridic attempt, Lamanskii's and ot-
hers' efforts, intended here.)

Anyway,the important thing here is NOT the current monetary constraints
in accessing this knowledge individually  (ie.paying the rent), but the
fact that this knowledge and heritage is preserved,exists and gradually
will be even more accessible to all of us...

Imagine... retrieving all authors with their respective pages using the
lemma:  "Philosophy", or "Alexander", or "Dusan", or "Architecture", or
"Cicero", or "Sisman",  or "Danube", or "Crimea", or "Nevsky", or "Ari-
stotle", or "Resurrection", or whatever  in a few minutes instead of...
years!  For example: Thucydides is "scanned" in 12 seconds!!
                                                             A. Romanos
Newsgroups: soc.culture.polish