I have this file to spell with ispell in Emacs: https://dataswamp.org/~incal/emacs-init/spell.el Using it has revealed a bug in Debian ispell-init-process: Illegal format hash table /usr/lib/ispell/svenska.hash - expected magic2 0x9602, got 0x414c It can be solved using this command: $ sudo buildhash /usr/share/dict/svenska /usr/lib/ispell/svenska.aff /usr/lib/ispell/svenska.hash -- underground experts united https://dataswamp.org/~incal