#616 Query

The other day, I saw this article about Microsoft. Apparently, Microsoft Office 2007 is incompatible with its own Outlook Express.
But only in its spellchecker.
Because if you have Microsoft Office 2007 installed and use the spellchecker in Outlook Express it will only recognize French words.
Ordinary English words are tough, but you’re okay with avenue and boulevard and cul-de-sac. No word if the bug affects Microsoft Streets and Trips.
The article I read this in was one of those question and answer deals and the questioner said the spellchecker wouldn’t recognize words like “you” and “then” and “the.” He was in a real dither about it, or possibly a tizzy, it’s hard sometimes to distinguish, but my first thought was, if you’re having problems spelling “you” and “the” maybe a spellchecker is the least of your problems—in any language.
Our language borrows a lot from the French. Even in our hallowed all American game of baseball.
The other day I was listening to a news story about an umpire and I said to myself: Umpire. That’s a weird word. Umpire. It doesn’t sound like it comes from anything.
I mean, usually the suffix “pire” comes after something like a breathing word—inspire, expire, respire. Do umpires have something to do with the life and breath of baseball? Nope. Umpire barked out its first exclamation as a French word.
I put in a query to etymology dot com and found out the following. Umpire came from the word noumpere. Which meant non-par or unequal. Unequal as in odd man.
It had a legal sense, the odd man who broke the tie and settled a dispute. An arbitrator.
It drifted over to England way back when, where an arbitrator was sometimes called “a noumpere.”
Because of something called faulty separation, “a noumpere” degenerated into “an oumpere” which brightened, since English folk like longer vowels, into umpire.
And then shortened, since we hate spelling long words, into ump.
From arbitrator to ump. No wonder its hard to create English compatible spellcheckers.
America, ya gotta love it