README – English Hunspell Dictionaries  
Maintained by Marco A.G.Pinto  


FREE SOFTWARE  
=============  
These spellcheckers are free software — free to use, share, and modify.  

They are intended for a broad audience, including students, professionals,  
writers, and non-native speakers.  

Feedback is welcome to help keep these dictionaries accurate and reliable.  


DICTIONARY MAINTENANCE  
======================  
Marco maintains six main English variants:  
  • en_GB (British, “ise”), since 25.Aug.2013  
  • en_GB-oxendict (Oxford English Dictionary, “ize”), since 1.Mar.2025  
  • en_ZA (South African, “ise”), since 01.Jan.2025  
  • en_US (American, “ize”), since 01.Jan.2026 (alternative version)  
  • en_CA (Canadian, “mixed”), since 01.Jan.2026 (alternative version)  
  • en_AU (Australian, “ise”), since 01.Jan.2026 (alternative version)  

Notes:  
  • Both “-ise” and “-ize” forms are provided; some variants may still have  
    missing or misplaced forms.  
  • en_ZA and en_GB are maintained in parallel, with the GB dictionary having  
    been merged into the ZA dictionary while retaining regional terms.  
  • en_US, en_CA, and en_AU are converted from en_GB using Proofing Tool GUI,  
    then refined for regional vocabulary.  

en_ZA uses the same base list as en_GB, originally from the Aspell English  
wordlists (LGPL).  

Marco began maintaining en_GB and en_ZA after previous maintainers became  
unavailable, and later began work on alternative en_US, en_CA, and en_AU  
dictionaries alongside existing upstream versions.  

The en_GB dictionary began as a subset of Kevin Atkinson's wordlist for  
Pspell/Aspell (LGPL) and has been expanded by David Bartlett, Brian Kelk,  
Andrew Brown, and Marco A.G.Pinto, including:  
  • Removal of Americanisms in en_GB/en_ZA  
  • Addition of missing words  
  • Correction of errors  
  • Addition of compound hyphenated forms  
  • Thousands of proper/place names  
  • Thousands of possessives and plurals  
  • Removal of duplicates  
  • Support for ordinals and affixes (e.g., 1st, 111th, 1990s)  


CONTRIBUTORS  
============  
Many people have provided valuable input over the years — too numerous to list  
individually. Special thanks to:  

  • Cyberknight – Submitted numerous scientific terms in the early days and  
    helped create a legacy British Dictionary for Mozilla when modern  
    WebExtensions were not yet widely supported.  
    Although no longer in contact, his contributions remain a valued part  
    of the project's history.  

  • Babelfish (Peter C.) – Regularly contributed words and offered practical  
    suggestions that significantly refined and updated the dictionary.  

  • Peter C. (not Babelfish) – Advocated consistently for an “-ise” British  
    Dictionary, resulting in the inclusion of many such entries and ensuring  
    alignment with modern linguistic standards.  

These wordlists aim to represent modern English for the Commonwealth and  
North America.  

The .AFF file was originally created by David Bartlett and Andrew Brown based  
on MySpell rules (LGPL), focusing on accurate morphology, not file compression.  
Marco has refined the rules since 2013.  


MARCO A.G.PINTO  
===============  
Marco forked the British dictionary in 2013 after years without updates,  
choosing Mozilla's unobfuscated version.  

Spelling is verified using:  
  • Oxford Dictionaries  
  • Collins Dictionary  
  • Cambridge Dictionary  
  • Merriam-Webster Dictionary  
  • Wiktionary (used with caution ⚠)  
  • Wikipedia (used with caution ⚠)  
  • Physical dictionaries  

Main challenges:  
  • Proper names  
  • Possessives  
  • Plurals  


HUNSPELL ENGINE  
===============  
The Hunspell engine was developed by Németh László, an open-source tool used for  
spellchecking and morphological analysis.  

It is capable of handling complex word forms, affixes, and spelling rules with  
efficiency.  

Hunspell has become the standard engine for many major software projects, and  
Németh László's work continues to support and enhance modern language tools.  


TABOO/OFFENSIVE WORDS  
=====================  
A NOSUGGEST flag is applied to certain taboo or offensive words to prevent them  
from being suggested in spellchecking results.  

While every effort has been made to mark the most offensive terms, it is not  
guaranteed that all possible taboo words are flagged.  

Some words have intentionally been left unflagged because, although considered  
taboo in some dictionaries, they are not generally regarded as swear words in  
modern usage.  


CONTACT  
=======  
Marco A.G.Pinto  
  • E-mail: marcoagpinto@sapo.pt  
  • Website: https://proofingtoolgui.org  
  • FAQ: https://proofingtoolgui.org/faq.html  
  • Changelog: https://proofingtoolgui.org/en_GB_CHANGES.txt  
  • GitHub: https://github.com/marcoagpinto/aoo-mozilla-en-dict  
  • Article: https://marcoagpinto.com  


CHANGELOG (2025+)  
=================  
2026-07-01 (Marco A.G.Pinto)
           - Major updates to the Canadian and US dictionaries.
           - Removed Americanisms from the GB dictionary.
           - Removed Britishisms from the US dictionary.
           - Added MAXNGRAMSUGS 7 to keep spelling suggestions more focused and reduce noise.
           - Switched to FLAG UTF-8 after running out of flags.
           - Added flag “í” for American English -ist, -ist's and -ists forms (single-L words).
           - Added ' to WORDCHARS to recognise words such as 'gainst.
           - Added REP entry: "teh" → "the".
           - Added possessive forms for most -ness nouns.
           - Added numerous derived forms, including plurals and possessives.

2026-05-01 (Marco A.G.Pinto)
           - Flag enhancements, mainly for U.S. words.

2026-03-07 (Marco A.G.Pinto)
           - Critical update: An issue in the US dictionary was caused by my tool automatically
             removing prefixes from lemmas in the removal list.

2026-03-01 (Marco A.G.Pinto)
           - Flag enhancements, mainly for U.S. words.
           - Major fixes and improvements to the US dictionary.

2026-02-01 (Marco A.G.Pinto)
           - Flag enhancements, mainly for U.S. words.
           - Major fixes and improvements to the US, CA, and AU dictionaries.
           - Added an OED (Oxford English Dictionary) dictionary to the LibreOffice extension.

2026-01-01 (Marco A.G.Pinto)
           - Marco began maintaining alternative versions of the US, CA, and AU dictionaries.
           - Merged the GB dictionary into the ZA dictionary.
           - Aligned all six dictionaries to the GB versioning format for consistency.
           - Removed numerous Americanisms from the GB dictionary.
           - The hyph US and GB files now use UTF-8-BOM Unix (LF).
           - The thesaurus now uses UTF-8-BOM Unix (LF).
           - Improved images for extensions.

----------------

2025-03-02 to 2025-12-31 (Marco A.G.Pinto)
           - Better -ise/-ize handling.
           - Fixed, improved, and added flags for U.S. compatibility on 1-JAN-2026.

2025-03-01 (Marco A.G.Pinto)
           - New extension icons for Mozilla (GB) in 96×96 and for LibreOffice/OpenOffice
             in 128×128 pixels.
           - The default GB and ZA spelling is now -ise.
           - Unified the GB and ZA .AFF file.
           - Merged hundreds of thousands of proper names from GB to ZA.
           - Fixed/improved: flag “O” and “W”.

2025-01-01 (Marco A.G.Pinto)
           - Official fork of ZA Dictionary.


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