Spell checking in KDE applications does not work properly or not at all. The global spell checking options in the systemsettings default to "German" instead of choosing one of the country-specific options like "German (Germany)". When I choose one of them, the "German" entry disappears. As a result, and because the global options are completely ignored by the applications, apps like Kopete where I can't find a dedicated spell checking configuration window don't do any spell checking. The console output says something like "No dictionary found for 'de' ". For Konqueror, I can use the spell check configuration window to set up the correct dictionary and it will work - but it ignores the global setting here, too. The same goes for KMail, but even if I manually set the dictionary there it does not work, and after restarting the message composer it falls back to the "German" dictionary - the setting is not stored.
This is Kubuntu 9.04 with all updates applied.
I just noticed that when I directly start KMail without Kontact running, the spell checking does work. I still have to set it each time I start the compose though as the setting does not get stored.