22

As a native Spanish speaker, a lot of words in my language have accents on them and writing SMS with this shortens its length to half, due to unicode conversion.

My idea is to edit the predictive dictionary and remove all the special characters, in order to avoid getting them while writing.

So, my question is, where's the dictionary located? I'm currently using the LG Optimus Me stock keyboard. I did a little research inside the system folders and found a couple of xt9 folders but no traces of the Spanish (or other languages) dictionary.

Improve this question
5
  • is your phone rooted?
    – jlehenbauer
    Commented Jun 21, 2012 at 18:07
  • @jlehenbauer Yup, gingerbreaked.
    – Andres
    Commented Jun 22, 2012 at 2:40
  • Could you please list the contents of the /system/app directory? Connect your phone to a computer and type: 'adb shell ls - l /system/app'
    – user13391
    Commented Jun 23, 2012 at 22:21
  • @RichardBorcsik Here are the contents: pastebin.com/dzGf1CTs
    – Andres
    Commented Jun 25, 2012 at 14:21
  • @RichardBorcsik Here's a zip file with all the files. mugredelcajon.com.ar/system-apps.zip Be my guest if you want to investigate them. I hope i didn't give you my passwords inside those files :F
    – Andres
    Commented Jun 25, 2012 at 14:47

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
10
+25

EDIT: it's not the answer you want, but provides useful info nonetheless, here's the userdict file:

/data/data/com.android.providers.userdictionary/databases/user_dict.db

You need root to access it and sqlite3 to view the data inside (here's mine):

localhost # cd /data/data/com.android.providers.userdictionary/databases/   
localhost # sqlite3 user_dict.db .dump                                                        
PRAGMA foreign_keys=OFF;
BEGIN TRANSACTION;  
CREATE TABLE android_metadata (locale TEXT);  
INSERT INTO "android_metadata" VALUES('de_DE');  
CREATE TABLE words (_id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,word TEXT,frequency INTEGER,locale TEXT,appid INTEGER);  
INSERT INTO "words" VALUES(2,'ok',128,'de',0);  
INSERT INTO "words" VALUES(3,'LG',128,'de',0);  
INSERT INTO "words" VALUES(4,'no',128,'de',0);  
COMMIT;
Improve this answer
3
  • 2
    alas, i guess that's not what the op wants. (he wants to patch out non-ascii chars in the included spanish default dict to not have it autocomplete to non ascii letters so that SMS encoding wont switch from 7 bit ASCII to 8bit unicode
    – ce4
    Commented Jun 22, 2012 at 7:13
  • Yeah, this leads to the userdictonary database. Anyway, i'm broswing the data folder in order to find a similar database, hopefully, with the spanish dict. Thanks anyway!
    – Andres
    Commented Jun 22, 2012 at 15:33
  • for non-rooted phones, there's a paid app which let you backup/restore user dictionary play.google.com/store/apps/…
    – GorvGoyl
    Commented Sep 14, 2018 at 9:52
4

Most Android versions allow you to add words to the native dictionary.

Most are found at: Settings -> Language & Keyboard -> User Dictionary

Android 2.3.7 (Cyanogenmod 7.1): Menu -> Settings -> Language and keyboard settings -> User Dictionary press Menu then Add

Android 4.0 (ICS): Settings -> Language & Keyboard -> Touch Input (settings button) -> Personal Dictionary -> Edit personal dictionary

You could then add the words without the accent marks and special characters, and it would stop auto-correcting them.

If you do still wish to locate the language packs and are using Cyanogenmod, this site indicates that the languages are stored in .apk files in the /system/app/ directory, for example LatinIME.apk would be the latin dictionary. Additionally the source for this dictionary would be in ./packages/inputmethods/LatinIME as described on the site provided. (It also goes over adding your own dictionaries, which means you could edit the one you use, and re-install it).

Improve this answer
2
  • Mmmm seems that this is only applicable to Cyanogenmods. My stock firmware (LG Optimus Me/P350) doesn't have any latinIME.apk file or *.dict files inside of any apk in /system/app
    – Andres
    Commented Jun 21, 2012 at 18:05
  • 1
    Updated answer to indicate as much. i'll keep looking, though I don't have an Optimus, so I won't be much help. I'd download X-plore File Manager and do a search in the root for *.dict. I'll keep looking for other solutions though.
    – jlehenbauer
    Commented Jun 21, 2012 at 18:08
1

I've been looking into modifying the default keyboard and dictionaries and so far I've dug up the source for the default dictionaries:

https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/inputmethods/LatinIME/+/master/dictionaries/

Improve this answer
1
  • There are not much languages in there, where can i find more?
    – TomSawyer
    Commented Jun 5, 2016 at 7:36
0

I have some files that I think are dictionaries in /system/usr/xt9. They have language codes in their file names and are copyright by Tegic, according to the header.

These files are in the LDB format which appears to be a database format. I wasn't able to find any utility that can view or edit them.

Improve this answer
2
  • Found the same thing in my cellphone, but for some reason there's no spanish dictionary there (which my phone does have), at least judging by the filenames.
    – Andres
    Commented Apr 30, 2012 at 16:39
  • 1
    I believe LDB files are compressed somehow. For uncompressed Tegic xt9 files, I was able to observe the list of words with an hex editor as GHex.
    – user1315300
    Commented Jan 27, 2021 at 7:22

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .