0

I am writing mostly in English and I use the default "ABC" layout on macbook with macOS Monterey.

Sometimes I get an email in different languages.

I reply them in the same language. I don't want to change keyboard layout, because I wouldn't know where the letters are.

However, apple mail now keeps typo-correcting them into English words.

The only way to make spellcheck work correctly, is to change the keyboard layout, resulting in constant mistyping as letters are moved around.

Does anyone have a suggestion, how to keep an email's language in say German, while typing on the English-ABC keyboard?

Thank you and Happy Holidays!

(Some languages may have the ABC layout, but not the ones I use.)

Improve this question
1
  • I am surprised that changing the keyboard layout would change the spellcheck, as normally the layout does not play a role in this on MacOS (although it is the governing setting on iOS).
    – Tom Gewecke
    Commented Dec 23, 2021 at 16:07

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

Spellcheck in MacOS for Apple apps is governed independently from the keyboard via System Preferences > Keyboard > Text > Spelling and (in an app) via Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Show Spelling and Grammar. See this note.

So you should be able to use ABC with any language that it is able to type and still have the right spellcheck by adjusting those settings.

Improve this answer
2
  • Thanks Tom! This problem is about autocorrect-while-typing. It needs to know the language, but it seems to make pretty bad guesses about emails that contain e.g.: English phrases or quotes (e.g: In Wikipedia steht: " a species of inedible fungus found growing in ...", even worse, when you forward an English email with X language comments added on top). Maybe the problem is that apple mail does not have a document language that you can choose, such as in Microsoft or google products. I will keep editing this with more experience.
    – bud.dugong
    Commented Jan 4, 2022 at 17:10
  • @bud.dugong Mail does not tag text with language, so you are at the mercy of the MacOS "multilingual" system (i.e. you set up "automatic" with the boxes checked for the languages you need). Whether Outlook does this better I don't know
    – Tom Gewecke
    Commented Jan 4, 2022 at 18:17
1

I have this "problem" all the time with friends and family who communicate with me in Italian. So, I often need to send emails in Italian.

The ONLY email app I can find that does spell check in Italian, using a USA keyboard, is POSTBOX. It works very well and doesn't require modifications or new settings in MacOS. App developer says it's also available on a PC. No smartphone version--so far.

To date (Dec 2022) I haven't found a good substitute. Hope this helps. Cheers.

Improve this answer
2
  • I don't understand why you can't just to system preferences > keyboard > text > spelling and set it to Italian (not Automatic). Then all spellcheck will be for italian, no matter what keyboard or you want to use, and for just about every app except Word.
    – Tom Gewecke
    Commented Dec 25, 2022 at 20:43
  • You can if you want to. I just find revising system preferences to be a little clunky and it doesn't always catch typos. Cheers.
    – Maurizio
    Commented Dec 26, 2022 at 21:03

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .