Does Pages have spelling check for Chinese?

No. You would have to try to add that from a 3rd party source. See

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2011/06/extra-spell-checking-dictionaries-for.html

(spell checking is part of the OS, not Pages)

Are we talking about pinyin?

Chinese script is non-alphabetic, what is there to check?

Peter

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

Chinese script is non-alphabetic, what is there to check?

A great many Chinese "words" actually require 2 or more characters. I think a "spell checker" would probably look for character sequences that do not correspond to a "word" in some reference dictionary. But I have not used one myself...

I am aware of that Tom, but can't think how the combination of a couple of characters constitutes a "spelling", especially as you can make your own combinations to make new "words".

Still I am not a native Mandarin speaker, maybe the O.P. can clarify this. I am quite curious about how it works.

Peter

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

can't think how the combination of a couple of characters constitutes a "spelling", especially as you can make your own combinations to make new "words".

The same way the combination of a couple of letters constitutes a "spelling", by being in some kind of "dictionary" of what native readers accept as combinations that mean something. A spell checker is very likely going to put a red line under new words the author makes up in either case. Chinese has the added problem that there are no spaces between the words, so the checker has to identify semantic units. No easy task I'm sure.

My understanding of how Mandarin works is that the pairing of characters is to clarify hominyms which abound in Chinese and sometimes to create combinations for new expressions, there being a limit to the number of existing characters.

This just demonstrates the impracticality of unique glyphs for words. Ultimately they run out and you are back to multiples to fill the gaps. The worst of both worlds.

I too am puzzled how the pairs would be discovered and isolated by a spellchecker, just as I am puzzled how it would do it in Thai which also lacks word spaces.

Peter

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

My understanding of how Mandarin works is that the pairing of characters is to clarify hominyms

That is probably right historically, but as a practical matter the language now makes very heavy use of words that polysyllabic in a definite way. In the case of Thai, OS X actually has a special dictionary whose purpose is to make sure line endings composed in that script occur at word boundaries at least.

Chenen wrote:

They have this for MS word on Windows. Since I have a Mac, I can't use that.

I see that MS Word for Mac does not have Chinese Proofing Tools, only Japanese. I will ask around, but it may be that the one with MS Word for Windows is the only spellchecker for this language.

You can install Windows on your Mac using either Boot Camp or a Virtualiser and install the Windows version of MsWord on that.

Peter