Dictionaries for International Ispell

Many people have contributed dictionaries and affix files to allow ispell to be used with their native languages. These are listed below. Unlike the languages/Where file in the distribution, this list includes only dictionaries that are actually intended for use with ispell.

Some of the affix files distributed with ispell are identical to or are based on the affix files at the ftp sites listed below.

Older affix files from some of these sites will require changes to the defstringtype and altstringtype statements to specify a deformatter before they will work with ispell 3.1. This is done by adding a new quoted string, "TeX" or "nroff", after the first quoted string in the statement.

SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING "OBSCURE" LANGUAGES: Kevin Scannell of St. Louis University is collaborating with a number of people to develop word lists for minority languages using automated techniques. If you don't find a word list below, it is worth visiting his site to check for the latest status and updates.

Please do not write me asking where to find dictionaries that are not listed on this page. Everything I know is posted here. On the other hand, if you find an error or broken link in the page, or if you know of a dictionary that is not listed, please do send mail to geoff@cs.hmc.edu so that I can update this page.

Following is a canonical list of everything I know about:

Afrikaans Dictionaries and Affix Files

Albanian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Belarusian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Unfortunately, all known Belarusian dictionaries have disappeared from the Internet. Please let me know if you are aware of a working Belarusian dictionary for ispell.

Bulgarian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Catalan Dictionaries and Affix Files

Chichewa Dictionaries and Affix Files

Croatian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Czech Dictionaries and Affix Files

Danish Dictionaries and Affix Files

Dutch Dictionaries and Affix Files

The Dutch dictionaries that used to be hosted at ftp.tue.nl have disappeared. However, a site called smartocr.com appears to have archived them and many more.

English Dictionaries

Variant English Spellings

Specialized Dictionaries for Specific Fields

Esperanto Dictionaries and Affix Files

Estonian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Finnish Dictionaries and Affix Files

French Dictionaries and Affix Files

Frisian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Galician (Minimos) Dictionaries and Affix Files

German Dictionaries and Affix Files

Perhaps because German was my first test language, there are plenty of German dictionaries available. I don't have a lot of hints for choosing between them, but I believe that Heinz Knutzen's version, being the most recent, is probably the best.

Incidentally, if you choose a dictionary that uses the "wrong" umlaut notation of `"a' instead of the `a"' that ispell expects, you can convert it with the following ugly sed command:

	sed 's/"\(.\)/\1"/g' wrong-dictionary > proper-dictionary

(I'd suggest that you use cut-and-paste directly out of this Web page to make sure you get it right.)

Greek Dictionaries and Affix Files

Hebrew Dictionaries and Affix Files

Hungarian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Interlingua Dictionaries and Affix Files

Italian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Irish Dictionaries and Affix Files

Kinyarwanda Dictionaries and Affix Files

Kurdish Dictionaries and Affix Files

Latin Dictionaries and Affix Files

Lithuanian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Maltese Dictionaries and Affix Files

Manx Gaelic Dictionaries and Affix Files

Norwegian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Polish Dictionaries and Affix Files

Portuguese Dictionaries and Affix Files

Quechua Dictionaries and Affix Files

Romanian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Russian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Sardinian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Scottish Gaelic Dictionaries and Affix Files

Setswana Dictionaries and Affix Files

Slovakian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Slovenian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Sorbian (Wendish) Dictionaries and Affix Files

Spanish Dictionaries and Affix Files

Swedish Dictionaries and Affix Files

Tagalog Dictionaries and Affix Files

Tartar Dictionaries and Affix Files

Tetum Dictionaries and Affix Files

Ukrainian Dictionaries and Affix Files

Vietnamese Dictionaries and Affix Files

Walloon Dictionaries and Affix Files

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