How do you change the language in iPad Pages?

What a lot of confusion in this discussion!

The language of a text is a property of the text itself. If the keyboard or the language of the OS of the computer is changes afterwards, the language of the text remains what it was.

Only at the moment when text is typed the keyboard settings may be used to identify the language. If you are able to imagine a text composed of sentences in different languages you should be able to understand this.

Changing the keyboard in order to change the spellckeck only works at the moment of typing. With texts written earlier it is meaningless.

When I import a document written in German on my Mac to my iPhone and iPad, Pages on iPhone and iPad do niot recognise that the text is German. The spelling checker underlines everything. And what people complain about here is that we do not find the place where to tell Pages that the existing, imported text is written in a certain language.

Please stop mixing this up with keyboard issues!

if I use the French keyboard it autocorrects in French etc.

How do you change the language in iPad Pages?

I want to be able to type in the French language and have spellcheck correct in French. I can't figure out how to do this.

I can't seem to find an option to use Pages in a language other than English.

Did you ever figure out how to change spell check without changing the keyboard? I done a few searches and Mr. Geweke keeps telling everyone to change their keyboard. He obviously does not write in more than English. Changing the keyboard changes the whole layout buy moving letters around. Having a functional spellcheck that identifies the language some one is type is clearly a problem but I have come to the conclusion that this forum is a waste of time be UAE the constant refrain is..."This isn't Apple tell them" it just a bunch of blind bats lead blind mice!

seaustin wrote:

Did you ever figure out how to change spell check without changing the keyboard?

You don't seem to understand the point of this discussion. People who use iOS Pages want to be able to change the spellcheck by changing the keyboard. They cannot because of a bug. Instead they have to change the entire iOS localization, which is totally impractical. Nobody here can fix it for them, they have to keep telling Apple via the feedback channel to fix their mistake, so iOS Pages works like every other iOS app.

It is indeed a waste of time for you to tell people here that iOS should have a spellcheck that automatically identifies the language. The feedback channel is the only way to convey that to anyone who matters at Apple.

The full OS X does have such a spellcheck, though opinions vary about how well it works. I doubt this will find its way into iOS any time soon, but you never know, a new iOS version is coming out in a few months.

Changing the keyboard language does in fact change the language for spellcheck purposes in iOS. But, as pointed out here, yes, it's either everything or nothing. iOS Pages looks at the whole document in one language or the other. In Mac Pages you can select specific segments of text and choose the language. This must be done manually.

I point that out because MS Word does figure out on its own (at the paragraph level) which language is being used, with no user intervention. This is really convenient for those of us who write stuff in more than one language within the same document. Even so, I kinda like my Pages more.

Hanno of Nijmegen wrote:

Changing the keyboard in order to change the spellckeck only works at the moment of typing. With texts written earlier it is meaningless.

For documents composed directly in iPad Pages your statement is not true, is it? I can change the spellcheck at any time by changing the keyboard.

You are right about confusion, but bear in mind this discussion started over a year ago and that iPad Pages may have changed in the meantime and that different posters may be asking about different situations, e.g. composing directly on the iPad vs editing docs composed in OS X and transferred to the iPad.

I also write in both French and English, using Pages (or email) on an iPad. For me the easiest way to do this, without changing the ios is just to go to to settings and turn automatic spellcheck and correction off. Perhaps it means sticking to the default keyboard and doing the spell check yourself. Using the default keyboard I find that this is compensated for by the fact that accents, (graves, acutes, cedillas and so forth) are easily managed by just holding your finger on the letter you want to accent and then sliding the finger to select the appropriate accent.

Not ideal, but, to my mind much less fuss than fiddling with hr IOS.

Regards,

fitzlefrog

I think I have the solution to this problem. It allows a quick change of language for spell checking WITHOUT changing the OS Language when using a wirless keyboard. Personally I use this method every day to switch between Spanish and English. I'm using iPad 2, the latest versions of Pages at the time of writing and IOS 5.1.1

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1. Make sure you have the keyboard language you want to use added in General Settings (Settings:General:International Keyboards:Add a New Keyboard)

2 Once you are in Pages or any other app use the key that brings up the software keyboard (on the Apple Keyboard it's in the very top right hand corner, if you are using any other read the user manual that came with it to find out)

3 Use the Globe Key, to the left of the Space Bar (on the screen keyboard) to switch to the language you want.

4 Use the hardware keyboard button or the screen keyboard button (extreme bottom right) to get rid of the software keyboard.

That's it! As long as you have spell checking enabled for the language you are using (which is the default setting when available) it should now spell correct in the language you want as you type.

Hope that clears up some of the confusion.

aRory wrote:

I think I have the solution to this problem. It allows a quick change of language for spell checking WITHOUT changing the OS Language when using a wirless keyboard.

The standard way to do that is by using the keyboard shortcut apple/command + space. Does this not work for you?