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Word needs a Latin dictionary

by Office Watch 16 October 2013

The Vatican’s latest mistake can be blamed on Microsoft … if you try hard enough.

A good laugh can be had with this news from the Vatican:

“A commemorative coins issued by the Vatican has been withdrawn because it spells the word ‘Jesus’ incorrectly”.

You’d think that knowing how to spell the name of the son of god would be among the minimum entry requirements for work at the Vatican … but it turns out it’s not as simple as it seems.

The coin inscription was in Latin and in that language the name should be ‘Jesvs’ not ‘Lesvs’ on the errant coins. (The letter u is a v in Latin. While Latin had no letter J originally, the Vatican intended to use that letter for familiarity)

So how is this Microsoft’s fault? Well, for starters everything is Microsoft’s fault, obviously.

Most of us rely on Word as the main spell checking system for documents and emails. Microsoft has made great strides to have dictionary support in many languages. Gone are the days when English, French and Spanish were the main options – now you can get spell-checking in languages like Finnish, Kazakh and Thai among many.

But not Latin – my old Latin master in high school would be spinning in his sepulchrum .

Even Google Translate supports Latin. If MS Word had a Latin spell-checker the Vatican could have avoided this errorem. Ergo, Microsoft can be blamed for the whole mess!

Now, if Word would support Etruscan – that would be really impressive.

Word needs a Latin dictionary

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