Re: NB 8 (Trial version)

["Patricia M. Godfrey" PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx]

Robert Holmgren wrote:
Replying to Bill TeBrake, who had written
> > Indeed, I often wish there were no
> > electronic spellers at all.
>
> I agree. They're worthless, and people should just learn how to spell. It's
> part of being civilized.
On the whole, yes. One may have a personal blank spot, where a spell
checker can be useful (e.g., in my case, words in -ant or -ent, -annce
or -ence: I know the Latin roots, but some came into English by way of
Norman French, and suffered change of the final vowel, so I'm glad to
have those checked by an algorithm and save me the trouble of looking
them up). But all too often unless I stop and customize, half the words
I want to use are ones the spellchecker never heard of. (Some of the
suggested substitutions can be hilarious: lenitive for genitive, say.
[Well, well: Tbird knows genitive!]) And how many times have we seen in
print, say "They're isn't anything..." or even "Their isn't anything..."
No way a spell checker can distinguish homonyms.
> However, that really only applies to one's native
> tongue, and we are, after all, talking not only about, say, a German user, but
> also (say) a Spanish user trying to write in German. (In the EU, you know,
> people really are multilingual!!)
In Europe, they always were. My father (b. 1881) spoke four languages
like a native (including French good enough to fool Parisians and
American English without a trace of an accent), a fifth with some
fluency, and had bits and pieces of half a dozen others.
On the other hand, some Americans make Europeans look like pikers. I'm
thinking of Robert's own recent display of Spanish: I don't know the
language, so I cannot tell how good it was, but it was certainly fluent.
(And I'll bet it was good too.)

--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx