(In reply to comment #0)
> still present in  ineiric ubuntu 11.10

> I'm using
> Release:    10.04

No, you don't. You are using 11.10. Please avoid misleading information.

> ProblemType: Bug
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
> Package: empathy 2.30.0.1-0ubuntu1
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-19.28-generic 2.6.32.10+drm33.1
> Uname: Linux 2.6.32-19-generic x86_64
> Architecture: amd64
> Date: Sat Apr 10 11:17:05 2010
> EcryptfsInUse: Yes
> ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/empathy
> InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
> ProcEnviron:
>  SHELL=/bin/bash
>  PATH=(custom, user)
>  LANG=de_DE.utf8
> SourcePackage: empathy

This is all useless information. 
Exact steps to reproduce would be very welcome though.

the bug was present in 10.04 and than gone with the updates and different versions..the reporter said that it is still present so i  enter  it in description.

Please be nice with Muhammad: Obviously he's only trying to help to improve Ubuntu/Empathy by forwarding the reported bug to upstream. Please consider consulting the original bug report. It may contain more valuable information.

BUG SUMMARY:
German spell check fails completely, though gedit/enchant work well. The problem seems to affect _only_ the german dictionary!

The bug is present in Ubuntu 10.04 to 11.10 and even in Empathy 3.3.1-0ubuntu2~ppa11.10+1 (Developer PPA)

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1. sudo apt-get install empathy aspell aspell-de aspell-en
2. Start Empathy
3. In Empathy : Change spell checking dictionary to 
   contain German. It does not make any difference, if you
   select English & German or only the german dictionary
4. Type the message "Dies ist ein Test: sfff"
5. Type: "Please fix my bad english"

EXPECTED RESULT:
Only "sfff" should be marked as error.

ACTUAL RESULT:
All German input is always marked as error. The english input behaves well, if the english dictionary is enabled.

TEST OF ENCHANT:
1. echo "Dies ist ein Test: sfff" > test.txt
2. enchant test.txt -l
3. Enchan correctly reports only sfff

So enchant seems to work. I use a german locale / environment. Just if this matter regarding reproducebility.

Hope this helps! Man Thanks!
- Ben

(In reply to comment #3)
> Please be nice with Muhammad: Obviously he's only trying to help to improve
> Ubuntu/Empathy by forwarding the reported bug to upstream. Please consider
> consulting the original bug report. It may contain more valuable information.

That's not how it works. Valuable information has to be HERE, in bugzilla.gnome.org. Don't make me click for information that's not searchable by GNOME Bugzilla's Query functionality if you want things to get fixed. :)
With regard to "helping to improve Empathy", https://bugzilla.gnome.org/page.cgi?id=bug-writing.html is a good resource how to write good bug reports.

(In reply to comment #3)

> BUG SUMMARY:
> German spell check fails completely, though gedit/enchant work well. The
> problem seems to affect _only_ the german dictionary!

Humm that's weird, Empathy is also using libenchant. Are you sure it's working fine with gedit? What about Abiword?

Created attachment 206407 [details]
test app

Here is a small test script.

Please build it using: gcc $(pkg-config --cflags --libs enchant) test-enchant.c
and run it using: ./a.out $LANG $WORD

where $LANG is the code of the lang you want to use and $WORD the word you want is spelling to be checked. Running the app without any argument will just display all the dictionnaries installed on your system.

You may have to install libenchant-dev in order to build it.

Hello Guillaume! Thank you very much for your response.

Unfortunately my C developer capabilities are a bit basic: I failed to build the test script: It complains about missing symbols, though libgnome2-dev and libenchant-dev are installed:

test-enchant.c:(.text+0x2a): undefined reference to `g_print'
test-enchant.c:(.text+0x43): undefined reference to `enchant_broker_init'
test-enchant.c:(.text+0x61): undefined reference to `enchant_broker_list_dicts'
test-enchant.c:(.text+0x6c): undefined reference to `enchant_broker_free'
test-enchant.c:(.text+0x7a): undefined reference to `enchant_broker_init'
test-enchant.c:(.text+0x8f): undefined reference to `enchant_broker_request_dict'
test-enchant.c:(.text+0xc4): undefined reference to `g_assertion_message_expr'
test-enchant.c:(.text+0xf9): undefined reference to `enchant_dict_check'

What dependencies am I missing?!

Nevertheless I observed a small detail in gedit which might be the key: In gedit if I choose "Deutsch" as language, it fails, too. But If I choose "Deutsch (Deutschland)" as language it works. 
In Abiword only languages with country locales are available.

As I was unable to build the test program I tried to test it on a different way.

~/dev$ enchant -d de-DE test.txt 
~/dev$ enchant -d de test.txt 
error: line 1: missing or bad word count in the dic file
Hash Manager Error : 4

Hmmmm.... looks like a distribution problem or something?! btw. at least aspell reports a de and a de-DE dict installed?!

So I guess the problem in empathy is just caused because it tries to use a "de" dictionary vs. the working "de-DE" or "de-DE-neu" or "de-AT" etc.?

Humm yeah sounds like an enchant bug maybe. Anyway, best to redirect this bug to enchant's developpers, they are the best to ask to.

Closing this bug here, feel free to forward to http://bugzilla.abisource.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Enchant

Thank you very much for your kind, fast and helpful feedback. I forwarded this issue to http://bugzilla.abisource.com/show_bug.cgi?id=13252