Canadian Dictionary

[Icaarus]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: intel

So after reading many forms and many hours of Googling I have yet to find the answer to one question. Why if Office 2007 has a Canadian Dictionary, does 2008 not have it? Does anyone know of a solution to this inexplicable omission?

P.S. To those that would say UK = CA, stop there are enough differences for Oxford to create many Canadian editions, there is obviously enough difference to warrant a different dictionary in Word.

 

[John McGhie]

Market size. There are not enough Canadians willing to pay extra to get
their own dictionary, and not enough sales of Office:Mac into Canada to make
it worth the cost of producing the dictionary.

Bug your local Microsoft Office about this: they need to make a business
case to Redmond seeking the budget to produce a localised dictionary for
Canada.

Until that business case shows that Microsoft will make more money with a
Canadian dictionary than they do without it, you won't get it.

You asked: that's the reason

The solution is to create an Exclusion Dictionary to remove the spellings
you do not want from the UK dictionary, then add the versions you do want to
the Custom Dictionary.

Sadly, due to a bug, Exclusion Dictionaries do not work in Office 2004/2008
(Unless they were fixed in the most recent patch and nobody noticed yet...)

Cheers

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: intel

So after reading many forms and many hours of Googling I have yet to find the
answer to one question. Why if Office 2007 has a Canadian Dictionary, does
2008 not have it? Does anyone know of a solution to this inexplicable
omission?

P.S. To those that would say UK = CA, stop there are enough differences for
Oxford to create many Canadian editions, there is obviously enough difference
to warrant a different dictionary in Word.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[MC]

Market size. There are not enough Canadians willing to pay extra to get
their own dictionary, and not enough sales of Office:Mac into Canada to make
it worth the cost of producing the dictionary.

Bug your local Microsoft Office about this: they need to make a business
case to Redmond seeking the budget to produce a localised dictionary for
Canada.

Until that business case shows that Microsoft will make more money with a
Canadian dictionary than they do without it, you won't get it.

You asked: that's the reason

The solution is to create an Exclusion Dictionary to remove the spellings
you do not want from the UK dictionary, then add the versions you do want to
the Custom Dictionary.

Sadly, due to a bug, Exclusion Dictionaries do not work in Office 2004/2008
(Unless they were fixed in the most recent patch and nobody noticed yet...)

I've never had any problem with the following solution:

Use English (US) and add the very few Canadian variants to my custom
dictionary. It's not as though Canadians are consistent from coast to
coast anyway. Some newspapers go British with words like "colour" and
"honour" while others go American (largely because that's the way the
bulk of their wire service stories come in).

 

[Phillip Jones]

The problem with a Canadian Dictionary is That the country is almost
equally divided between using the King's English (British English) and
French Canadian which is not exactly quite like European French.

I have a Sister-in_law who is a French teacher and as Field Trip They
went to a French Canadian section of Canada, thinking it would be a good
experience for the French Class. She said although she could understand
and say some terms they used. The experience was so bad the field trip
was worthless. On the other hand the next year when they went to Paris.
Everything was perfect.

Evidently French Canadian and France French was about as much alike is
Spain Spanish and Mexican Spanish. they may go by the same language name
but that is where the similarities disappear.

Market size. There are not enough Canadians willing to pay extra to get
their own dictionary, and not enough sales of Office:Mac into Canada to make
it worth the cost of producing the dictionary.

Bug your local Microsoft Office about this: they need to make a business
case to Redmond seeking the budget to produce a localised dictionary for
Canada.

Until that business case shows that Microsoft will make more money with a
Canadian dictionary than they do without it, you won't get it.

You asked: that's the reason

The solution is to create an Exclusion Dictionary to remove the spellings
you do not want from the UK dictionary, then add the versions you do want to
the Custom Dictionary.

Sadly, due to a bug, Exclusion Dictionaries do not work in Office 2004/2008
(Unless they were fixed in the most recent patch and nobody noticed yet...)

Cheers

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Icaarus]

Phillip Jones Wrote:
"The problem with a Canadian Dictionary is That the country is almost equally divided between using the King's English (British English) and French Canadian which is not exactly quite like European French."

While I appreciate the ideology of this comment there are two problems. I believe sir that you have been mislead to think that there is one Canadian Dictionary. In fact there are trusted English Canadian and French Canadian dictionaries that are published and reviewed separately. Secondly, There is a French Canadian dictionary in word but no English Canadian Dictionary. Since these are stored as .txt files I cannot see how difficult it would be for them to add a Canadian English dictionary for 3/4 (English) of our population when the obviously market to the other 1/4 (Quebec French).

John McGhie
"Bug your local Microsoft Office about this: they need to make a business case to Redmond seeking the budget to produce a localised dictionary for Canada."

Will do thanks for the advice.

 

[Michel Bintener]

Evidently French Canadian and France French was about as much alike is
Spain Spanish and Mexican Spanish. they may go by the same language name
but that is where the similarities disappear.

As Oscar Wilde puts it in 'The Canterville Ghost':

"We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of
course, language."

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:mac (Entourage & Word)

*** Please always reply to the newsgroup. ***

 

[Phillip Jones]

To Icaarus and Michael,

At no point was my comments meant to be insulting.

It was meant only to point out the complexities of creating a dictionary
or dictionary's for a Country so sharply divided in the languages it
uses and because of dialect differences, makes it even more complex.
Nothing else.

Although, the US's *Official* language is our form of English (which
most people speak) we to have all type of languages spoken as well.

So Canada is not alone in Language diversity.

As Oscar Wilde puts it in 'The Canterville Ghost':

"We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of
course, language."

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Icaarus]

Phillip I understand the diversities of languages spoke both in the US and Canada. Where Canada has two official languages, and the US has one. It seems to me an error of negligence that when their Windows counterparts support Canadian English and the dictionaries are stored as simple text files that they would choose to cater to the smaller percentage of our population and leave the greater percentage out of the loop.

Considering a significant portion of their market growth for their products have mostly been made on campuses across this country. It is arguable to claim that they are the ones most in need of a correct dictionary. That they would cater to their audience.

Please do not see my inability to write eloquently as meaning that I think your comments are in some way insulting. I was just hoping to get enough attention to this forum for an admin/mac BU rep to add a comment or two.

 

[Clive Huggan]

On 30/6/08 7:15 AM, in article (e-mail address removed)9absDaxw,

I was just hoping to get enough
attention to this forum for an admin/mac BU rep to add a comment or two.

MacBU people only visit here incidentally. As CyberTaz mentioned in a
different thread earlier today:

'For clarification, MS "provides" the server space, it doesn't "host" the
forum. This is a user-to-user public support newsgroup. Some members of
MacBU do occasionally dip a toe in the water, but this is not monitored by
anyone from MS in the manner some might think. Its sole purpose is to assist
others with the use of the respective app as it currently stands.

If you have a legitimate complaint or reasonable feature request your
comments will be far more effective if you use the Send Feedback feature in
the Help menu of each Office program. The data received through *that* venue
is monitored by the developers, engineers & decision makers at MS who have
real say about what happens down the road.'

If you (and others) report via Help, a MacBU employee will see it and it
will be incorporated into the official feedback system -- which does work.

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the Americas and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
====================================================

 

[John McGhie]

Just one small correction: The Main Dictionary for a language family is not
stored as a .txt file

It is in fact a compiled database application. This is mainly for speed: to
avoid having to load multi-megabytes of dictionary into memory. But also to
prevent people from stealing the dictionary.

For which Microsoft has to either pay a licence, or make their own
dictionary. It may be that none of the Canadian-English dictionary
publishers wish to licence their product to Microsoft. But it's more likely
that formatting and re-compiling the thing for Mac Office is simply too much
work.

However, there is now no good reason why the dictionaries they already have
for the PC flavour of Word could not be used on the Mac.

So I think our best option is to point this out to your local Microsoft
Office. "Letters to the Newspaper" would be a suggested way of delivering
the message: they tend to read the letters in the newspaper quite carefully.
Local Microsoft Subsidiary Managers tend to receive phone calls they would
rather not answer from Redmond, containing pungent "please explain"
messages, if they get Microsoft's name in the newspaper

Cheers

Phillip Jones Wrote:
"The problem with a Canadian Dictionary is That the country is almost equally
divided between using the King's English (British English) and French Canadian
which is not exactly quite like European French."

While I appreciate the ideology of this comment there are two problems. I
believe sir that you have been mislead to think that there is one Canadian
Dictionary. In fact there are trusted English Canadian and French Canadian
dictionaries that are published and reviewed separately. Secondly, There is a
French Canadian dictionary in word but no English Canadian Dictionary. Since
these are stored as .txt files I cannot see how difficult it would be for them
to add a Canadian English dictionary for 3/4 (English) of our population when
the obviously market to the other 1/4 (Quebec French).

John McGhie
"Bug your local Microsoft Office about this: they need to make a business case
to Redmond seeking the budget to produce a localised dictionary for Canada."

Will do thanks for the advice.

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Phillip Jones]

Thanks did want to come off as insulting.

My suggestion is to go to feed back link with Office 2008 a nd plead you
case with MS and point out your finding. Don't be insulting, they will
just dig their heels in and avoid doing at all cost.

Express you displeasure. But don't beat them over the head.

Phillip I understand the diversities of languages spoke both in the US and Canada. Where Canada has two official languages, and the US has one. It seems to me an error of negligence that when their Windows counterparts support Canadian English and the dictionaries are stored as simple text files that they would choose to cater to the smaller percentage of our population and leave the greater percentage out of the loop.

Considering a significant portion of their market growth for their products have mostly been made on campuses across this country. It is arguable to claim that they are the ones most in need of a correct dictionary. That they would cater to their audience.

Please do not see my inability to write eloquently as meaning that I think your comments are in some way insulting. I was just hoping to get enough attention to this forum for an admin/mac BU rep to add a comment or two.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[Phillip Jones]

Oh how leaving off two letters and a ' make a difference in the meaning
of a post let's see if I can get it right:

Thanks *didn't* want to come off as insulting.

My suggestion is to go to feed back link with Office 2008 and plead
you case with MS and point out your finding. Don't be insulting, they
will just dig their heels in and avoid doing at all cost.

Thanks did want to come off as insulting.

My suggestion is to go to feed back link with Office 2008 a nd plead
you case with MS and point out your finding. Don't be insulting, they
will just dig their heels in and avoid doing at all cost.

Express you displeasure. But don't beat them over the head.

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phillip M. Jones, CET |LIFE MEMBER: VPEA ETA-I, NESDA, ISCET, Sterling
616 Liberty Street |Who's Who. PHONE:276-632-5045, FAX:276-632-0868
Martinsville Va 24112 |[email protected], ICQ11269732, AIM pjonescet
------------------------------------------------------------------------

If it's "fixed", don't "break it"!

mailto[email protected]

<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/90th_Birthday/index.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Fulcher/default.html>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Harris/default.htm>
<http://www.kimbanet.com/~pjones/Jones/default.htm>

<http://www.vpea.org>

 

[nervey]

here's a list of changes from the UK dictionary i just made. just add each
one to the dictionary and you should be set.

happy canadian typing. does anyone else find it wierd that AUS has a smaller
population but THEY still get their own dictionary? i guess its very close to
UK though...

Amortize
Anemia
Anesthesia
Apologize
Apnea
archeology
Armour
Artifact
Authorize
behoove
behooves
capitalize
carburetor
catalyze
checkered
cozy
counselor
defense
diarrhea
emphasize
gonorrhea
gynecology
hemorrhage
installment
jewelry
lasagna
maneuver
mustache
edema
orthopedic
pediatrics
plow
pretense
skeptical
skillful
sulfur
tidbit
tidbits
woolen

and autocorrect these:
Dr to Dr.
For ever to forever

 

[Clive Huggan]

On 21/8/08 11:36 PM, in article
(e-mail address removed), "nervey"

Does anyone else find it wierd that AUS has a smaller
population but THEY still get their own dictionary? i guess its very close to
UK though...

Not that close, though closer than Canadian English. Place names are
included too.

I'm told that once, long ago, someone in Microsoft Australia had a budget
surplus and decided to fund an Australian dictionary for the Mac. Why not
call Microsoft Canada and tell them not to be tight-fisted? ;-)

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the Americas and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
====================================================

 

[John McGhie]

Excellent!! Great work. Many thanks for that...

here's a list of changes from the UK dictionary i just made. just add each
one to the dictionary and you should be set.

happy canadian typing. does anyone else find it wierd that AUS has a smaller
population but THEY still get their own dictionary? i guess its very close to
UK though...

No, it has nothing to do with that. Most of us arrived on a prison ship
from Mother England, so we understand crime and punishment really really
well.

We simply told them we would break their kneecaps, then bribed them!

You can do this too

Making the dictionary itself is not the largest cost: the cost is in
obtaining the licence to the source. Australia was lucky in that there were
two or three competing dictionaries of Australian English available, and one
of them was partly government-funded. So the licence was available quite
cheaply and in perpetuity (which is important: a large recurring fee is not
an attractive proposition...)

Cheers


--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]