Support non-US English

[ccjmne]

Hey! 👋

Thanks for this excellent tool!

I'd like to request a way to switch "language flavour", without implementing my dictionaries myself.

I understand that committing to maintaining the built-in dictionaries in one language is already pretty great, and the purpose of this tool was always to be an "English grammar checker", that's its scope and it's very respectable! I have no intention of even suggesting any different!

However, I wish it would allow me to type colour the way most of the English-speaking world (all but the US) would.
As far as I can tell, the main difference in the grammar (so, not talking about pronunciation, idioms, culture... 😉) between the different English "flavours" lies in the spelling of a few patterns (ou/o, ise/ize, ogue/og...).

Some words are outright different (trousers/pants, university/college), but these are a lot more local than they are global: I'm fairly certain the Singaporeans, New Zealanders, Indians and other English-speaking communities have their own specific overrides and additions there, and I do not suppose that this should be something Harper's built-in dictionaries would need to look into!

To get back to the original topic, I also sorta wish it'd suggest to me:

Hey, you spelt subsidized here whereas you probably meant subsidised

So my ideal wouldn't be a mere addition to the default dictionary, but some substitution. I mean, effectively a substitution, I do not know how the solution would work in practice. Is it realistically possible to compute the differences between the two spellings with a set of rules?

I'd like to help if there's anything that can be done! 😄
Alternatively, how would I proceed? I could also just add the differently-spelt variants to my personal dictionaries as I encounter them.

Thanks in advance, and thanks again for Harper!

[elijah-potter]

You're in luck! I've been working on significantly enhancing how Harper's dictionary works under the hood. I reckon I can just add flags to different variations of words, as well as an option to set your locale. That way we can continue using the same dictionary, just modifying it to include a bit more information about what version of English each word should be used in.

I'll update here once I've got something working.

[anarcat]

I speak french too: are there plans to support entirely different dictionaries and languages here? How about conjugation and grammar? Should I file another issue for this?