Language tools

Language tools are tools available to the development of a language.

Spellchecker
Spellchecker is a software to check the spelling in a certain language. There are many open source spell checking software available.


 * aspell: most available and with the most documentation (User manual of GNU aspell).
 * ispell: more robust but less common
 * hunspell: used by major open source applications like OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox, etc.

Before you make your spellchecker, you need to have a list of vocabulary set and the corresponding morphological rules to combine with prefices and suffices. You may need special software to analyse your vocabulary set in order to determine the morphological rules. Field Linguists' Toolbox from SIL International is one of such tool.

To put or not to put?
Sometimes words are formed by either adding affices or by the combination of two or more basic components. In that case, the new word will be put into the vocabulary set if there are new meanings assigned to the newly formed word.


 * e.g. serial --> + -ize = serialize --> + -ation = serialization,
 * such words will usually not added to the vocabulary set, as no extra meanings are add to the stem word.
 * e.g. compute --> + -er = computer,
 * this new word need to add to vocabulary set, as the meaning of "computer" differ from the original meaning of "compute".

Hyphenation
If your vocabulary set contains many long words, you may need to think about hyphenation rules. After that, you may need to implement such rules for your spellchecker or editor.