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It's aboot time I asked this one. Firefox thinks I'm Canadian.

I've got absolutely nothing against Canadians and their spelling is a lot better than Americans' but I don't spell specialised with a z. There are other, similar issues where I'm writing something and suddenly the dunce-squiggle pops up.

Anyway... How on earth does one set the default language? Can I remove English (Canada) completely?

Some clarifications as to why some of these answers aren't right for me, but might be right for somebody else:

  • Select another dictionary in Firefox by right clicking a textarea — This didn't hold between sessions. I would quit Firefox sipping my cup of tea, start it back up and be halfway through O Canada.

  • Remove the Canadian dictionary from Firefox — Simple: I didn't have it installed. The only dictionary language pack I had installed in Firefox is GB.

In my case I had somehow installed system-wide dictionary packages for en_CA and en_ZA. I've still no idea why or even how these kept replacing the Firefox default because I also have a system-wide en_GB dictionary package. Very odd. Package.

Oli
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    This could help: http://askubuntu.com/questions/50049/how-to-use-american-english-spelling-dictionary-in-firefox – jobrfr Sep 05 '12 at 11:02
  • @TomBrossman What's the wrong way? "I went sailing on aboot"? "On my foot is aboot"? – Oli Sep 05 '12 at 11:04
  • @rearlight That's currently how I change back to *Real* English, yeah - but it doesn't stick. If I close Firefox and start it back up, I'm back in Canada. – Oli Sep 05 '12 at 11:06
  • You, Dan, and Mitch have all made reference to accessing Language options by right-clicking a text area. I don't have this on my right-click menu (and I have FF prefs set to check spelling). Am I missing something basic? I can post this as a new question if necessary. – Tom Brossman Sep 05 '12 at 11:46
  • @TomBrossman It's only in the context menus for textareas (eg the comment box) and not single text inputs (eg search box). – Oli Sep 05 '12 at 12:48
  • Got it now, it has to be **editable** text, not just a line of text on the screen. Totally missed it until now. – Tom Brossman Sep 05 '12 at 13:47

5 Answers5

23

Firefox seems to use myspell/hunspell and listing /usr/share/myspell/dicts/ shows me the dictionaries that I'm given options to use:

$ ls -1 /usr/share/myspell/dicts/*.dic
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/en_CA.dic 
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/en_GB.dic
/usr/share/myspell/dicts/en_ZA.dic
...

Search for the dictionary filename in installed packages:

$ dpkg -S /usr/share/myspell/dicts/en_CA.dic
hunspell-en-ca: /usr/share/myspell/dicts/en_CA.dic

So with the Canadian language package name, the fix is to remove it:

sudo apt-get remove hunspell-en-ca
Cas
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Oli
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    `sudo apt-get remove myspell-en-au myspell-en-gb myspell-en-za hunspell-en-ca && sudo apt-get install myspell-en-us` Whew! Thank you! No offense my good Brits but this had been driving me nuts for two years now, cheers! – Insperatus Jan 17 '13 at 08:31
  • My system had the hunspell dictionaries in a different place. If you want to figure out where they are for sure, Firefox will tell you where it's finding them in the `spellchecker.dictionary_path` preference in `about:config`. – T.C. Proctor Nov 26 '19 at 15:59
2

A simple answer is saying that a language pack is an Add-on.

  • Go to Tools -> Add-ons.
    If you are using Ubuntu 12.04 or newer, you can use Dash to search in your menu; Tap Alt, and start typing Add-ons.

  • After you open the Add-ons manager, click on the Languages tab in left menu. There, you can disable any language.

  • After adding a language, just right click on any text area, or input field (By default input fields have spell checking disabled, so you will need to enable it before proceeding to the next step.).

  • Choose Language from the context menu, and select the language you want, and this will become your default language until you change it again.

P.S. Clicking on "Add language" in the context menu, will take you to a page which contains a listing of language dictionary packs that links to their corresponding add-ons.

andrew.46
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Dan
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  • Previous comment was incorrect :) Either way, I didn't have a Canadian language pack installed and I did have the British one installed - it was getting it from MySpell/HunSpell – Oli Sep 05 '12 at 11:21
2

Insperatus's comment deserves to be a full answer. I've had this problem not only with Canadian spelling, but sometimes Firefox would use UK or Australian spelling. On Ubuntu Linux, removing the dictionaries from the system for non-US English fixes this problem.

sudo apt-get remove myspell-en-au myspell-en-gb myspell-en-za hunspell-en-ca && sudo apt-get install myspell-en-us

Before:

firefox spelling language before removal

After:

firefox spelling language after removal

Community
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Stephen Ostermiller
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0

Right click on a text area, make sure that Check Spelling in checked, and choose the right dictionary.

enter image description here

Then go to the add-on page click on extensions, and either disable or remove the one that you don't want.

enter image description here

Mitch
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    I don't have that same right-click context menu, is it Windows-only? The 'Languages' option isn't there. – Tom Brossman Sep 05 '12 at 11:32
  • Make sure that Check Spelling in checked, and those options will appear. – Mitch Sep 05 '12 at 11:35
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    It is, in `Preferences/Advanced/General/'Check my spelling as I type'` – Tom Brossman Sep 05 '12 at 11:37
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    The thing is, that since Firefox is installed with `apt-get` the default language packs that are installed, are also installed with `apt-get` and you cannot remove them from Firefox. You can only disable them with Firefox. If you need to remove them, it has to be done through apt-get. Only dictionaries added through [AMO](https://addons.mozilla.org) can be installed from within Firefox. – Dan Sep 05 '12 at 16:52
  • @Oli Did this work for you? – Mitch Sep 08 '12 at 15:00
0

I had this problem for months, where I'd pick English as the spell-check language, but it would "forget" when I re-started the browser.

I checked my Add-Ons->Dictionaries menu and didn't have a listing for "English (US)", even though that's my default locale. I manually installed it (from Mozilla's web site) and now when I set English as the spell-check language, the preference sticks.

Bottom line: if you're trying to tell it to use your system language as the spell-checker default, make sure you have a dictionary add-on installed for it first.

Coderer
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