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How does one change the dictionary default from Portuguese to English?

  • 5 replies
  • 39 have this problem
  • 28 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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In one of the upgrades, instead of defaulting to English, my spellchecker instead defaults to Portuguese, which is the first language listed (also have French and Spanish). So every time I open Firefox, I have to change back to English.

In one of the upgrades, instead of defaulting to English, my spellchecker instead defaults to Portuguese, which is the first language listed (also have French and Spanish). So every time I open Firefox, I have to change back to English.

All Replies (5)

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Do you have a dictionary installed and selected?

You can see which dictionary is selected if you right-click in a text area and open the Languages submenu.

At least one dictionary should be installed and have a check mark to indicate that it is selected.

  • Open the "Add Dictionaries" link to install a dictionary if you do not have one.
  • Make sure that [X] "Check Spelling" in the right-click context menu is check-marked.

You can enable or disable spell checking globally:

  • Tools > Options > Advanced : General: Browsing: "Check my spelling as I type"
  • for MAC > *FIREFOX > Preferences > Advanced : General: Browsing: "Check my spelling as I type"
  • Firefox > Preferences > Content > Languages

You can look here for dictionaries:

For more

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Thank you, Jaya, but as I'd already mentioned, I already had the four dictionaries installed. The precise order is: Portuguese, French, English, Spanish.

Although this morning English was the default (as evidenced by the dot by it), usually when I open or re-open the browser, Portuguese is the default - and I have to change to English. The problem is that while English was the last selected language always (I only use Portuguese rarely, in fact), it has been defaulted to Portuguese upon opening the browser.

None of the steps you mentioned say how to select the default language. And if it's as simple as selecting it, then it's not working.

Thank you again for your assistance - and your information is useful for someone who doesn't have a dictionary installed or doesn't have spellcheck enabled.

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I've had this problem for over a year. I have three dictionaries installed, but when opening a text box i.e. on a web page where text may be entered e.g. to create email or fill a form on line, 90+% of the words are red-wavy underlined because the dictionary in use is not my native language, but one I may occasionally try to use when I must...which is rarely.

Firefox NEEDS to have a setting for the Default Spell-Check Language, and it doesn't have one.

Unfortunately, I stopped coding some thirty years ago, and would love to do the fix, but I've simply been ignorant too long and must beg this of the fine developer crew out there.

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Go to about:config and search for "dictionary".

You'll find a Preference called "spellchecker.dictionary". Create if it doesn't exist. Finally, set it to the string "en-US".

That should do it, I think! :)

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You can check for problems with preferences.

Delete a possible user.js file and numbered prefs-##.js files and rename (or delete) the prefs.js file to reset all prefs to the default value including prefs set via user.js and prefs that are no longer supported in the current Firefox release.