Need help with language switching automatically

Ravioli

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Hi, long time no write.

I'm having a really obnoxious problem. I am forced to use my keyboard in the German language setting (QwertZ), because I don't know the English layout. However, both Open and Libre Office keep adjusting the language of the document to German although I keep setting that to UK EN. It needs to be EN because I write in English, but because my keyboard layout is set to DE, it keeps switching, which is extremely irritating and causes wrong quotation marks, y/z mixups etc. I haven't been able to write in weeks because of this hindrance.
Is there any way to make that stop, or is there a free software with spell check and all, that doesn't do this? Again, I cannot change my keyboard language. The software just needs to keep it to UK English no matter what my keyboard is set to. Thanks in advance!
 

RC turtle

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Can you turn off the "as-you-go" spell-check and run that as an extra step? Sounds like it would at least cut down on the fixes you need to make.
 

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I tried that, but it would still insist on having the document in German. The problem is not so much the spell check as the fact that German quotation marks are different than English ones in that the opening ones are placed at the bottom rather than the top of the first word. So since I have lots of dialogue, I'd end up with 1023947 bottom quotation marks to manually correct later.

For now, it seems to work to have "Ignore system input settings" or whatever it's called, checked, but when I first checked it, it still reset to German, so I half-expect that to stop working, too.

A few years ago, I had a really cool software that also worked as a style checker by pointing out over-used words, suggesting synonyms etc. It's not Grammarly, but I can't remember the name, but I vaguely remember it NOT doing this. I miss it, I wish I knew what it was called. It was definitely free.
 

Chris P

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I tried that, but it would still insist on having the document in German. The problem is not so much the spell check as the fact that German quotation marks are different than English ones in that the opening ones are placed at the bottom rather than the top of the first word. So since I have lots of dialogue, I'd end up with 1023947 bottom quotation marks to manually correct later.

This is not an ideal solution, but could you later, even on a different machine, do a find and replace on the opening quotation mark to fix them? Or would they just autocorrect back if you opened the doc on your own machine again?
 

Maryn

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My understanding--no doubt incomplete--is that all word processing software makes the language match the keyboard layout. So if you have the German keyboard and write in English, the software doesn't know or care that the words are English, it's going to use full-on German.

Since you've been writing in English since we've known you and clearly aren't about to stop, maybe it would be worth learning the English touch-type keyboard, even if you also write in German and use its keyboard layout.

Find-and-replace should handle all the open-quotes that are not the way English does it, a single step. You could even change the keyboard to English and do this as a last step, saving the document in this form, before switching the keyboard back to German for whatever else you're doing.
 

AW Admin

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See this: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...language/4c5c06eb-52eb-47a6-8a1f-728a117369b6

Keep in mind that you set languages preferences:
Via hardware—i.e. you are using a German hardware keyboard
Via the Keyboard control panel -- you can set it to use and English software keyboard with your German hardware
Via the Windows system language setting
Via the WordProcessor you are using which may require multiple places to have the language you want set.

You may have to set your language preferences to English each time you log in.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...language/4c5c06eb-52eb-47a6-8a1f-728a117369b6
 

Ravioli

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I appreciate everyone's help! Maryn is probably right, and I vaguely remember knowing my way around the EN keyboard as I remember having Y on the Z key at some point in my life. Long ago. For now, Libre is being a gooboi and not changing back after I checked the disregard box. I dunno, I've just become so daunted by the thought of having to learn new things these past years.