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Oy Vey! I’m Teaching My Phone To Speak Yiddish
“Dad’s Yartzeit is next week,” I texted my sister recently. (A Yartzeit is the yiddish word for the anniversary of a person’s death.)
Her response came back immediately:
“?????”
When I checked the text I’d just sent, it was easy to see why. Spellcheck had “corrected” the word Yartzeit to Yahtzee.
No wonder she was confused. There’s a world of difference between Yartzeit and Yahtzee.
I changed the word back and resent the message, reminding myself, once again, to proof my texts before letting them fly.
I was amused but not surprised by this little spelling snafu. We’ve all experienced Spellcheck “correcting” words with odd and/or funny results. My own favorite example of this is the friend whose mom once texted her, “You are adored.”
Spellcheck changed this message to “you are adopted.”
Quite a notification to get from mom out of the blue.
Nor was I shocked that Spellcheck wasn’t fluent in Yiddish. Why would I assume that my phone was Jewish just because I was?
Still, I noticed that when I texted my son later to tell him about his grandpa’s upcoming Yartzeit, Spellcheck didn’t change Yartzeit to Yatzee again. It now recognized the word…
