Jew with capital 'J' not in suggestion list

wolfix · Newbie Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 4

Hi,

Writer underlined in red the word 'jew'; I assumed since it was not capitalized. Now as I type this, FireFox has done the same. However, when I right click on the word to correct it neither Writer or FF provide the word 'Jew' with a capital 'J' in the suggestion list.

When I manually added a capital 'J', the red line disappears of course, so both programs acknowledge the word 'Jew' as correct but don't provide it as a suggestion to the incorrect word 'jew.'

I found this strange... is the word 'Jew' considered an offense; politically incorrect? It's not to me... my Bible uses the word 'Jew' often.

Thanks,

wolfix

9point9 · Moderator Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 3875 Location: UK

Which dictionary are you using? It shows up in the suggestion list for en-GB.

I don't think the majority of the worlds population considers 'Jew' offensive but there will be some (the Palestinians, Borat) who wouldn't care if it wasn't in the dictionary. It has had worse interpretations in the past (for hundreds of years in Europe Jews were commonly understood to be evil money launderers who molested children; Benjamin Disraeli was often referred to as 'The Jew' in Parliament despite having converted to Christianity in his teens, without which he could not have entered Parliament when he did) but that has gone from the majority of the world.

Yes, it may appear in the Bible but that's really no clarification on the issue as the Bible contradicts itself on many points and the overwhelming body of scientific knowledge that says that the world and all it's species were not created by God in 4004BC. It even goes so far as describing it's hypothesis on the forming of the Universe as 'testament', now that can be considered offensive.

No, Jew isn't offensive.
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wolfix · Newbie Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 4

I'm using the English USA version.

While we're on the subject, who was mistaken about Jesus being God and the only way to the Father? Jesus himself or his disciples? This is not a trick question. Out of interest, I like to ask it to peoples who express learnedness in such things.

wolfix

RonIA · Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 2:58 pm Post subject:

I can attest that Jew does not appear as a suggestion for jew with US English dictionary... (MS Windows XP, OO.o 2.0.4)
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billyboy · Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 3:24 pm Post subject:

billyboy · Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 3:28 pm Post subject:

Kaaredyret · Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 3:48 pm Post subject:

wolfix · Newbie Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 4

wolfix · Newbie Joined: 06 Dec 2006 Posts: 4

acknak · Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 10:10 pm Post subject:

Seems like an issue worth reporting to QA (the lack of "Jew" as a suggestion for "jew", not the issue of who Jesus was/is Wink

).

But I'm not sure what should be suggested as the correction.

While the lowercase form "jew" (i.e. a verb meaning "to bargain aggresively") is considered offensive, it is not misspelled. So, technically, "jew" should not be marked incorrect. But the more common situation is to use it as a proper noun and therefore providing the capitalized form would be more helpful.

billyboy · Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2006 11:44 pm Post subject:

My apologies too. I don't normally feed the trolls.
Bill
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Answers

Corfy · Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 6:55 am Post subject:

This is an issue that goes beyond what is being discussed. My guess is it has to do with some proper nouns, but I could be wrong.

In the US Dictionary in OOo, "ben" is seen as a misspelling, but nowhere does it offer "Ben" as a possible correction, although "Ben" is seen as correct. The same goes with "jan" and "Jan".

Although there are several words that I can come up with that is considered a misspelling with a lower case letter, most of them have the upper case letter version in the corrections. But obviously, not all of them. And I don't think Ben and Jan are words that anyone would find objectionable (at least, nobody who is an English speaker... I can't speak about every other language in the world). Certainly, my co-workers Ben B. and Jan H. don't find them objectionable.
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Kaaredyret · Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 8:25 am Post subject:

I don't use Writer for important work; I do not trust the spell checker and the dictionaries. I think you had a bad experience with the inferior spell checker (or dictionaries) in OpenOffice.org. I preferred StarOffice because it has a professional spell checker and thesaurus (but it now comes with far fever dictionaries). Not all open source projects are as good as commercial products... I think the poor quality of many dictionaries and the spell checker is a major weakness. Many schools will use OOo...

Examples from Microsoft Word XP (US English dictionary):

Examples from OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 (UK English dictionary):

You can see that OpenOffice.org is just shooting in the dark. It is scary that OOo doesn't suggest 'Jew' instead of 'sew'.
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acknak · Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 11:16 am Post subject:

Ouch. That could be a lot better.

Something is different for me though: my OOo (2.0.4 through 2.1.0rc2) does not suggest "Dan" or "Jew", but yours does, even though they are not at the top of the list. Are you sure you're using the en_US dictionary?

Also, does anyone know if the spellcheck/dictionary has a way to handle words that may be correct either as lowercase or capitalized? Does Word or StarOffice do anything helpful with these?

I started making a list of some--obviously I haven't gotten very far and I'm not sure there's any point in continuing. It really isn't correct to mark any of these as misspelled when they are not capitalized, but it might be helpful to offer to capitalize the word:

Kaaredyret · Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:37 pm Post subject:

Oh, my mistake. It was UK English. Reposting with new images of OOo using the US English dictionary:

I don't use Writer for important work; I do not trust the spell checker and the dictionaries. I think you had a bad experience with the inferior spell checker (or dictionaries) in OpenOffice.org. I preferred StarOffice because it has a professional spell checker and thesaurus (but it now comes with far fever dictionaries). Not all open source projects are as good as commercial products... I think the poor quality of many dictionaries and the spell checker is a major weakness. Many schools will use OOo...

Examples from Microsoft Word XP (US English dictionary):

Examples from OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 (US English dictionary):

You can see that OpenOffice.org is just shooting in the dark. It is scary that OOo doesn't suggest 'Jew' instead of 'sew'.