Do you mean for the spelling checker/dictionary?

Do you mean you wish to have the spellcheck dictionary change language according to the language of your composed message? If so, you might find this add-on useful:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/automatic-dictionary-switching/

soniaped said

How can I set the Italian language and choose it as defoult instead of English? It is very uncomfortable to change the language every time. Before I hadn't this problem, something must have happened following the updates. I work with a Mac Os X Yosemite thank you

Zenos said

Do you mean for the spelling checker/dictionary?

maybe yes

soniaped said

soniaped said

How can I set the Italian language and choose it as defoult instead of English? It is very uncomfortable to change the language every time. Before I hadn't this problem, something must have happened following the updates. I work with a Mac Os X Yosemite thank you

Zenos said

Do you mean for the spelling checker/dictionary?

maybe yes

I had a similar problem in that I selected en-gb and it kept reverting to en-us. IIRC, my solution was to open the config editor, look for en-us and change as appropriate to en-gb.

If even that fails, you might try editing the prefs.js file directly. Do make a backup first!

Zenos said

I had a similar problem in that I selected en-gb and it kept reverting to en-us. IIRC, my solution was to open the config editor, look for en-us and change as appropriate to en-gb. If even that fails, you might try editing the prefs.js file directly. Do make a backup first!

Thank you Zenos for the tip, but as I'm not skilled at all in doing such a stuff (and also my English is not fluent, sorry) I don't undestrand what do you mean and how to follow your indications, I don't know where to go into the computer to find -for example - “try editing the prefs.js " (?????) I'm a simple-super-basic user of my Mac. I appreciate your help but I don't undestrand why the Mozzilla support itself cannot tell me in a clear and simply way for which reason I have this problem and how I can solve it.

Well, it's a bug. It should just use whatever language you chose last time. My experience is that this doesn't work, because my en-gb setting was ignored and en-us offered in its place. I got the impression that whatever change I made was not written to the settings file. By editing the settings directly, I made the change myself.

Tools|Options|Advanced|General→Config Editor

It will probably warn you that you might break things. Tell it that you will be careful.

Type spellchecker.dictionary into the search box. In my case, this was set to en-us, and I knew the setting I wanted was en-gb, so I changed it. Double-click an entry to get a dialogue where you can change the setting.

In your case, I don't know for sure what abbreviation would be used for the Italian language. I'd suspect it would be it-IT or it_IT.

Generally, these abbreviations give the language (it) and the locality (IT). For languages that are used in several countries, such as English, Spanish or Portuguese, these distinctions are important. As an example, pt-BR means Portuguese as spoken in Brazil, and pt-PT means Portuguese as spoken in Portugal.

I'm not sure which settings are important here. If I search for en- I get all the places where English is mentioned, and they all (now) say en-gb. If you search for en- you'll see where English is currently being selected and you can make a judgement about which of them need to be changed to Italian. I'd start with just the spellchecker.dictionary setting.

I am nervous that if you change too much, you could lose the option to use the English dictionary, which I presume you would occasionally find useful.