Hi,
I have Debian 7 wheezy running on my laptop, currently it has only English, how can I install more languages?

Thanks

It's not really clear what you mean by "install more languages" (interface? keyboard? spell-checker?...). As root or using sudo you can run the following command and add what you want.
But as I said, I have no idea what you want to do.
jdk

I want for example to be able to switch between language when writing and email or when using libreoffice, currently I have only English.
On the previous linux I had (mandriva 2010) I used Shift-Shift to switch between languages and I had four different languages>

Thanks

I got this output
How can I switch between languages ? is it Shift-Shift ?

thanks

Hi,

you'll need to answer jdkaye's question to get more help.
Evo2.

I want for example to be able to switch between language when writing an email or when using libreoffice, currently I have only English.
On the previous linux I had (mandriva 2010) I used Shift-Shift to switch between languages and I had four different languages>

Thanks

interface? keyboard? spell-checker?

Evo2.

I don't realy know what is interface, but I guess it is keyboard, I want to be able to switch between languages, if you can help me to add spell checking to these new languages, then that would be great !

thanks

Hi,
Ok, interface in this context normally refers to the gui. So, the language used in the menus and dialogs or whatever program you are running. This is normally called localisation or "l10n". There are separate libreoffice l10n packages for different localisations. Perhaps you'd be interested in libreoffice-l10n-de which provides what is needed for a German language interface and and templates for libreoffice.
...

That would typically require different dictionaries. What spell checking program are you currently using (I don't use libreoffice so I don't know what spell checking backends are available).

Evo2.

No, I don't want to change the language of the menus and windows.
I just want debian 7 to support more languages,such as DE.
I choosed the de option under dpkg-reconfigure, but still there is only english.

Hi,
In general Debian does "support" other languages. The only specific thing you've said so far is that you want spell checking in German. I asked what spell checking software you use, but you did not answer. I did some research and it seems libreoffice uses myspell. So...
To use that locale you need to:
(but I suspect this is not really what you are after). For more info about locales see: http://wiki.debian.org/Locale

Evo2.

Lets forget about spell-checking for the moment.
After choosing the additional languages under dpkg-reconfigure, how do I make them active, just choosing them and clicking OK is not enough?

Thanks

Hi,
Ok... but that is the only request I really understand so far.

Not sure what you mean by clicking (does dpkg-reconfigure have some sort of gui frontend?). You can select multiple locales and then select "<Ok>". Then you will be presented with the list of locales that you selected. You can highlight one, and select "<Ok>" again to select the default locale.

To use a locale other that the default you can export the LANG environment variable as in my earlier post. This can be done for a single terminal, or by putting it in one of your bash dot files (eg ~/.bashrc), or perhaps even as a setting in Gnome (I assume that is what you are using).

Evo2.

Hi,
I choosed the option using space.
Yes I use Gnome, but could not find any where how to set another language.
What I want is this; for example, when I click compose in gmail, I want to be able to write in different language rather than English,
this is done if the OS supports multiple languages using SHIFT-SHIFT.

Now, on my debian 7, I only have English, I want to have more languages, German for example.
Is it clear now ?

thanks

Hi,
ok, that makes sense.

Ahh, now you are talking about input. That is something different again.
More clear. I use ibus to switch between different input methods. I've installed "ibus" which is the input framework and "im-config" so that I can set up the different input methods.
Then I also installed various input methods and utilities: buz-mozc mozc-utils-gui ibus-table ibus-table-latex.
I then ran im-config to set it all up, including the hot key to switch between input methods (from your posts it seems you are used to having "Shift-Shift" for this). I'm not familiar with German input, but I guess it should be much simpler since it is base on the Roman alphabet. It may be as simple as switching the keyboard layout. What actually happened when you hit "Shift-Shift" on Mandriva?

Note that a search for "german input debian" should yeild useful results.

Evo2.