[OS X Emacs] Weird problems using aspell in Aquamacs 2.4

[Martin Buchmann]

Hi all,

it has been a while since I used the wonderful Aquamacs on a regular basis but now I am working on one of my hobby projects and stumbled about a problem I was not able to solve with all my experience in different Emacs flavors and after spending two nights surfing the web for a solution. So, I hope someone can point me to the right direction here.

I am using macports aspell on my system with dictionaries for german and english. I have set the variable 'ispell-dictionary' to 'de-alt' which is the dictionary for the old german orthography. If I invoke ispell via 'M-x ispell-buffer' everything is fine. But if I want to work on an english text and set the file local variable 'ispell-local-dictionary' to 'en' or invoke the command 'ispell-change-dictionary' to change the dict I get the following error after 'M-x ispell buffer'. 

> Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Error: Expected language \"en\" but got \"de-alt\".")
>   signal(error ("Error: Expected language \"en\" but got \"de-alt\"."))
>   ad-Orig-error("%s" "Error: Expected language \"en\" but got \"de-alt\".")
>   apply(ad-Orig-error ("%s" "Error: Expected language \"en\" but got \"de-alt\"."))
>   error("%s" "Error: Expected language \"en\" but got \"de-alt\".")
>   ispell-init-process()
>   ispell-buffer-local-words()
>   ispell-accept-buffer-local-defs()
>   ispell-region(1 637)
>   ispell-buffer()
>   call-interactively(ispell-buffer t nil)
>   execute-extended-command(nil)
>   call-interactively(execute-extended-command nil nil)
> 

I tried to delete all customization in the ispell group without any difference so far. Using flyspell leads to the same error, which should be expected I guess. I couldn't find any location where aspell is forced to de-alt besides the variable 'ispell-dictionary' but this should be overruled by the local settings if I understand the documentation right.

Could anyone give me a hint?

Thanks in advance
  Martin