How to add Afrikaans spell checking and dictionaries to macOS 10.12…

I use Telegram Desktop a fair bit and it bugged me that Afrikaans spell checking was missing. Here is my current solution. I’m not sure it’s 100% tip-top, but it’s much better than it was.

Dictionary

Download these, unzip and copy into ~/Library/Dictionaries.

Open Dictionary.app, look in Preferences, enable the new dictionaries and move them into the order you want them.

Spell Check

Download en_af_ZA.zip, unzip, copy to ~/Library/Spelling. I found this on the translate.org.za site a few years back.

Settings > Keyboard > Text > Spelling drop down

Scroll down to “Set Up…” and enable Afrikaans.

Now set that drop down to Automatic by Language.

iOS

Just install SwiftKey app and enable Afrikaans.

Now, if only Telegram Desktop (Qt on macOS) would support spell checking. Until then, I’ll just have use the macOS Telegram app.