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Uzzi Ornan |
| Uzzi Ornan | |
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| Born | June 7, 1923 Jerusalem |
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| Nationality | Israeli |
| Other names | Uzziel Halperin |
| Occupation | Professor |
| Known for | Linguistics, social activism |
Uzzi Ornan (Hebrew: עוזי אורנן; also Uzi Ornan) (born June 7, 1923) is an Israeli linguist and social activist. Ornan is a member of the Academy of the Hebrew Language, professor of natural languages computing at the Technion and professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the founder of the League against Religious Coercion in Israel and an active supporter of the separation of church and state. Ornan was a member of the Israeli Canaanite movement, founded by his brother Yonatan Ratosh.1
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Ornan was born in Jerusalem as Uzziel Halperin, son of Yechiel Halperin, a Hebrew teacher and supporter of Chaim Weizmann, and Paulia, a member of Poale Zion. His parents immigrated to Mandate-era Palestine in 1919, as pioneers of the Third Aliyah. In his youth, Ornan was active in the Etzel. In 1944 he was detained by the British authorities. Subsequently he was deported to and imprisoned in Eritrea, Sudan and Kenya, where he was held until the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
In the internment camps he taught Hebrew phonology and morphology to other detainees. Back in Israel he published his method as diqduq ha-pe we-ha-'ozen (Hebrew for "Grammar of Mouth and Ear"), which became a classic method for acquiring Hebrew grammar skills in high schools. He soon started studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he received his Hebrew Linguistics PhD in 1964. He served his alma mater as lecturer and professor until 1987. In his research, he leaned to a formal approach. Throughout the years he became increasingly interested in natural language computing.
In 1979 he was elected as a member in the Academy of the Hebrew Language. He headed its committee that set the Hebrew standards for punctuation.
In 1987 he was a visiting professor at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. He managed a laboratory for natural languages computing for its department of Computer Science. He continues to teach and head a laboratory at the Technion to date.
In the nineties he developed a new standard for the Latin presentation of Hebrew (ISO-259-3), that allows for complete reversibility between the Hebrew and the Latin script. While the standard gained support from the Israel Standards Institute, the Academy of the Hebrew Language has not yet approved it.
In 1950 he founded the League Against Religious Coercion, in which he served as secretary and chairman until 1967. In the 1970s he was chairman of the Israeli Secular Movement. He is an opponent of circumcision. Since the 1990s he has been active in the "I am Israeli" movement, which strives for equality among all Israelis, by dropping the nationality from the formal government registration of each citizen or revising the nationality to include "Israeli" as an option. To this end several appeals were submitted to Israel courts.2
Uzzi Ornan has written many articles on equality, civil rights, separation of church and state, and language.
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