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Hunspell: Help for your word searches

Because Latin is an inflected language and used different spelling conventions over its long existence, it can be difficult to determine the correct dictionary look-up form (or lemma) of a given word. For example, if you search for junctus (for the Classical iunctus) or amaverat (an inflected form of amo), you most likely won’t get any hits.

Hunspell is a free spell checker that performs automatic lemmatization. In addition to inflections and letter variants, it can handle ligatures (pæne for paene) and diacritics (curâ or malè) that can otherwise complicate a word search.

If you misspell a word or enter one that Hunspell cannot lemmatize, it will offer a list of suggestions. (See image.)

Note: Unfortunately, Hunspell does not work well with Ancient Greek.

Hunspell dictionaries

Hunspell is already loaded on GoldenDict. But before you can activate it, Hunspell needs its own dictionary. (Most dictionaries on this site are not compatible with Hunspell.) Currently, there are two good options for Latin:

• A Latin Spellchecker by Karl Zeiler and Jean-Pierre Sutto. (Linux users, download here.) This vast dictionary contains more than 130,000 words from all periods of Latin. (Click the link in step 1 of the instructions below to dowload the file directly.)
• A Classical Latin Spelling Dictionary by Konrad Kokoszkiewicz. (Scroll to the very bottom of the linked page.) This strictly Classical lexicon is limited to words from before the end of the second century C.E.

Note: Both of these dictionaries can be used for spellchecking in other apps, including LibreOffice, Chrome, and Firefox.

Set up Hunspell on GoldenDict

1. Download the Hunspell dictionary and extract the files. (In addition to possible Read Me or License files, your unzipped folder should contain two dictionary files: one in AFF format and one in DIC.)

2. In the GoldenDict app, navigate to the Morphology window:
   1. In the menu bar, go to Edit > Dictionaries.
   2. Select the Sources tab in the Dictionaries window. (It should be selected by default; see image below.)
   3. Select the Morphology sub-tab.
3. Set your Hunspell dictionary:
   1. Press the Change… button, near the top of the Morphology window. This will open a popup window.
   2. Click on the pulldown menu at the top of the popup window, and navigate to where you saved your Hunspell dictionary.

   3. Select the folder that contains your Hundspell dictionary, and click Open.(You’ll see the path to your selected dictionary appear in bar next to the Change… button.)

      For Linux users: If you installed dictionary as package, then the correct path will be /usr/share/hunspell.

   4. Enable (check on) “Latin Morphology,” and press OK.

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