LibreOffice (free) is an open-source productivity suite from The Document Foundation, which is an offshoot from the developers who helped create Open-Office.org. One of the interesting features of LibreOffice’s Writer (the word processing program) is the ability to spell check in multiple languages, which is a helpful asset for business users who need to repeat paragraphs or write sentences in another language. Writer supports spell check capabilities for almost 50 different languages. The built-in dictionary and thesaurus also works with multiple languages.
Spell Check
Checking the spelling of words in your document is fairly easy. Open the document you want to spell check and highlight the section of text you want LibreOffice to examine.
Then, choose the Tools menu and click Spelling And Grammar. By default, LibreOffice
will search the text in your default language, likely English (USA), for the text you’ve highlighted. To change the language, click the Text Language drop-down menu and select the option you prefer.
You can also configure LibreOffice to use a different dictionary for specific sections or paragraphs, so that it always spell checks in the language you prefer. To do so, highlight the text where you want to change languages, click the Tools menu and select Language.
You can select either For Selection or For Paragraph, depending on the formatting of your selection. Then, choose the language you want LibreOffice to use.
LibreOffice will offer thesaurus options that match the selected language for the selection or paragraph. If you need to change the language of the thesaurus, click the Tools menu, select Language, and choose Thesaurus. Then, select the Language drop-down menu in the upper-right corner of the window and choose your language. Note that a thesaurus library isn’t available for every language listed.