Import Old Personal Dictionaries into Aspell Safely

aspell-import pulls your old Ispell and Aspell personal word lists into the format GNU Aspell actually uses. It takes zero command-line options and shows no confirmation prompt. This guide gets those old dictionaries imported and leaves you a record of exactly what changed. It uses aspell-import from Aspell 0.60.8.1, installed here as Debian package aspell 0.60.8.1-1build1.

Allow about fifteen minutes. You need a shell, the aspell package and a backup of the home directory holding the old dictionary files. The command changes files in that home directory, so keep a copy before you start. It does not need root privileges when you are importing your own files.

1. Check the command and its contract

Confirm which executable will run and record the installed package version:

$ command -v aspell-import
/usr/bin/aspell-import
$ dpkg-query -W -f='${Package} ${Version}\n' aspell
aspell 0.60.8.1-1build1

The installed manpage gives aspell-import no command-line options at all. Run it on its own; do not append a guessed language or directory flag. The utility discovers files in the home directory named by HOME.

2. Identify the files it can discover

Before importing, look at what the home directory actually holds. The command searches for two groups of names:

• .ispell_*: the older Ispell personal dictionaries.
• .aspell.*.*: Aspell personal files ending in .pws or .per, and replacement files ending in .prepl.

Use a shell glob check without opening or changing anything:

printf '%s\n' "$HOME" 
for file in "$HOME"/.ispell_* "$HOME"/.aspell.*.*; do
    [ -e "$file" ] && printf '%s\n' "$file"
done

A missing match is not an error: the shell leaves an unmatched glob unchanged, which is exactly why the [ -e ] test is there. Treat the printed list as your import set, and stop to inspect anything you did not expect to see.

3. Make a recoverable backup

Copy the discovered files somewhere you can restore from. A simple example creates a dated directory under a separate backup location:

backup_dir="$HOME/aspell-import-backup-2026-09-22"
mkdir -- "$backup_dir"
cp -- "$HOME"/.ispell_* "$HOME"/.aspell.*.* "$backup_dir"/

Every glob in that command must match at least one file. If your inspection only found one family, copy that family instead, for example cp -- "$HOME"/.ispell_american "$backup_dir"/ when that is the only match. Keep the backup until you have checked the imported dictionary.

4. Run the import

Run the command from an ordinary shell:

$ aspell-import
Processing "~/.ispell_american", lang = en
Merging en
@(#) International Ispell Version 3.1.20 (but really Aspell 0.60.8.1)

Your own output depends on which files and languages it finds. Expect one Processing line per recognised dictionary, then a Merging line per language it can merge. The language name is inferred from the filename and mapped to an Aspell language code, and there is no interactive confirmation prompt to catch a mistake.

Watch that language mapping closely: a filename with an unrecognised language name is skipped with a warning, except for a two-letter name the script treats as already abbreviated. A clean skip does not prove the dictionary contents are correct, so check the output before moving on.

5. Verify the generated personal files

Record the command's status immediately:

$ printf 'exit status: %s\n' "$?"
exit status: 0

Status 0 means the processing loop completed, not that a certain number of words were imported. List the files again and compare them with the backup:

find "$HOME" -maxdepth 1 -type f \
    \( -name '.ispell_*' -o -name '.aspell.*.*' \) -printf '%f\n' | sort
diff -u "$backup_dir/.aspell.en.pws" "$HOME/.aspell.en.pws"

Swap in a file that actually exists on your machine for that example .aspell.en.pws path. A difference is expected once old data has been merged in, but an unchanged source file is also possible: the utility reads old files and hands their entries to Aspell, while Aspell itself manages the resulting personal and replacement files.

For a content check, ask Aspell about a word you deliberately imported:

$ printf '%s\n' 'legacyword' | aspell --lang=en list
legacyword

Use a real word from your dictionary and the matching language code. If it is not printed back, that invocation did not accept it as an unrecognised word. Check the language, the source format and the generated file before retrying.

6. Recover from a bad import

Do not rerun the command repeatedly while guessing. Preserve the current generated files in a separate directory first, then restore the originals from the backup:

failed_dir="$HOME/aspell-import-after-failure-2026-09-22"
mkdir -- "$failed_dir"
cp -- "$HOME"/.aspell.*.* "$failed_dir"/ 2>/dev/null || true
cp -- "$backup_dir"/.ispell_* "$HOME"/ 2>/dev/null || true
cp -- "$backup_dir"/.aspell.*.* "$HOME"/ 2>/dev/null || true

Review the copied files before deleting anything. The trailing true only tolerates a backup that contains one file family rather than both; it does not hide failures from the earlier inspection or import command. If the backup is incomplete, stop and recover it from your separate backup system rather than reconstructing dictionary data by hand.