How to add Afrikaans spell checking and dictionaries to macOS 10.14 and iOS 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.

For macOS…

System

System Preferences > Language and Region
Add Afrikaans under Preferred Languages

Dictionary

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

Get one Afrikaans-English one and one English-Afrikaans. The bigger file sizes.

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.

Test with an app like Telegram, it should now let you type Afrikaans. Right click in the typing area, select ‘Spelling and Grammar > Check Spelling While Typing’.

For iOS…

System

Settings > General > Language and Region
Add Afrikaans under ‘Preferred Language Order’

SwiftKey

Install the SwiftKey app and enable Afrikaans.