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Mac Hebrew Soap Opera Continues

Posted by pudge on from the i-thought-all-computer-users-spoke-English-anyway dept.

Dark Nexus writes "The Register has a response (actually FROM Microsoft this time) in the continuing soap opera surrounding support for Hebrew (and other right to left languages) in Microsoft products for the Mac."

6 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Wow! by vegetablespork · · Score: 4, Funny
    Two posts already and no Godwin's law invocation. OK, here goes:

    Microsoft's obvious anti-Semitism, demonstrated clearly by their refusal to support Hebrew in Mac Office products, belies an obvious similarity to the Nazi party.

    In the interest of fairness, however, Office:Mac doesn't support Arabic, either.

    --

    Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.

  2. It IS just good business by Spencerian · · Score: 5, Funny

    Otherwise, Microsoft would have to cater to other languages with smaller populations as well. Logically, if Apple doesn't provide support, adding support in the MS product doesn't make sense, either.

    I'm betting that there's a larger clientele than Hebrew out there. It's an artificial language, and is growing pretty fast, based on some stats (yes, yes, I know--lies, damned lies, and statistics).

    Klingon. It's not widespread as Esperanto, but much hotter.

    I bet the Cut/Copy/Paste commands in Klingonnase would be more proactive...like...

    SLASH/CLONE/SMASH

    --
    Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
    1. Re:It IS just good business by foobar104 · · Score: 5, Informative

      If the Jewish users really wanted to use the software, they could simply pick up the German versions since Yiddish, the language spoken by most Jews (besides English), is the language which modern Hebrew is based upon.

      No, no. Yiddish is related only tangentially to Hebrew. Yiddish is, as you point out, related to German, but not closely enough for a German speaker to understand Yiddish or vice-versa. In fact, Yiddish is just barely more closely related to High German than English is.

      Yiddish first appeared around the 10th century in what is now southwestern Germany. At the time it was a dialect of German that included a large number of Hebrew words. Later, as the European Jews moved east, the language picked up some Slavic influences. In the 19th century, some English words and constructions began to enter the language as Jews from Europe and the Baltic immigrated to the US. Since World War II, of course, Yiddish has changed significantly, since there are so few Jews left in Germany, Poland, and what used to be Czechoslovakia.

      Modern Yiddish is written from right to left in a modified Hebrew alphabet, making it utterly incomprehensible to people who speak only German. And, presumably, vice versa.

      Modern Hebrew, the language spoken in Israel, is, again, only distantly related to Yiddish. Yiddish borrowed a good deal of vocabulary from Hebrew, but the pronounciation is influenced by Slavic languages, and the grammar is a mixture of High German and English. A Hebrew speaker might be able to pick out the occasional word of Yiddish, in writing, but almost certainly not in speech.

      I'm afraid your suggestion was completely wrong.

      (What I'm really curious about, though, is how many anti-Semitic trolls this post is going to inspire.)

    2. Re:It IS just good business by RevAaron · · Score: 3, Funny

      From your sig:

      You have good knowledge of UNIX and a girlfriend. Not many people can say that.

      Luckily, I can! And I can speak a little Klingon!

      --

      Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
  3. Re:Microsoft at it again by foobar104 · · Score: 4, Informative

    If Apple wanted Word to have Hebrew support, then they'd put it in their OS instead of whining that Microsoft doesn't go aout of its way to include it in office.

    According to rumor, Hebrew support will be included in Jaguar, the next major version of OS X. Support for scripts other than basic left-to-right was pretty much absent from 10.0 and 10.1, making Hebrew or Arabic localization impossible. With Jaguar, we expect to get expanded support for right-to-left scripts and input methods, opening up Hebrew, Arabic, and Arabic-like languages.

  4. Re:Microsoft at it again by foobar104 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Because microsoft didn't put in extra support for Hebrew, Apple has gotten up and fixed the problem.

    Post hoc ergo propter hoc. It's not correct to say that Apple is finishing Hebrew support because Microsoft didn't do it themselves. Apple's been doing support for Hebrew and other non-Roman languages since the WorldScript days in '91 or so. It's just taking a little time to add it to OS X.