Friday, June 13, 2014

German spellcheck


Recently I have been doing some writing on my computer in German. Spellcheck doesn't really know how to handle foreign languages. My niece told me to download a German keyboard, but like spellcheck, I don't really know how to handle that advice.

Spellcheck wanted to help, but what perplexed me is that the words it suggested often made no sense to me. For example, when I typed in himmelfahrt, it thought that I should change it to "himself arhat". 

OK, himself is a word in English, but arhat? What is arhat? Is that even a word?

I had to look it up to see. And amazingly enough, it is a word. In Sanskrit!

It means a "perfected person who has attained nirvana". So when Christ was making a fahrt to himmel, he himself was actually an arhat. 

Turns out spellcheck is even better than I thought, making translations at the same time it checks my spelling.


1 comment:

  1. I know a dozen or so Sanskrit words. This one is new to me. Arhat is what I wanna be! V

    ReplyDelete