US keyboards for my Mac

Maybe you need to read this page. US Keyboards would be under English.

Type in another language on your Mac with input sources - Apple Support

berutoran wrote:

Is there any trick, so that I can let MacOS recognize that I am typing in French while using my US keyboard?

It's not really a trick. MacOS has always set keyboards layout and spellcheck completely independently. You choose your keyboard in system preferences > keyboard > input sources. You choose your spellcheck in system preferences > keyboard > text > spelling (and in each app via Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Show Spelling and Grammar.)

You should have no problem typing French using US or any keyboard layout you want that has the necessary characters. You can even make your own custom layout with an app like Ukelele.

Note that MS Word doesn't use Apple's spellcheck but has its own. If you have problems with that app not applying French spellcheck while using a US keyboard layout, best check its own preferences and tools settings or ask in its MS forum.

berutoran wrote:

OK, let me take an example:

On my MacBook, I run MacOS Big Sur (11.6) and Windows10, through Parallels.

I think your problem is entirely with 3rd party apps which do not use Apple's spellcheck. You would not have these problems in any Apple app, and there is nothing that Apple can do to fix them in 3rd party apps. You need to contact the people who make them.

I think I saw once a trick to stop Word for Mac from having its spellcheck follow the keyboard layout. Will try to find it.

(If you do see this problem In any Apple app -- Mail, Safari, Pages, Notes, TextEdit, Message, etc -- let us know)

Unfortunately there is no guarantee that Apple's "automatic" will work properly. To maximize its potential, you need to go to the bottom of the list in system preferences > keyboard > text > spelling where it says "setup". Then make sure that only the boxes for the languages you want to include are checked.

The best way to make sure text is tagged according to the language you want is to switch the dictionary to that specific language when you start typing in it.

PS Regarding Word for Mac, I could not find any way to keep if from changing the text language when you change the input source, even though there is a box which should make this possible if left unchecked. It is totally buggy in this regard.

However the free Word clone LibreOffice does seem to behave properly, allowing the text to remain designated as French regardless of whether you have a US, German, or whatever input source active.

I think I may have a fix. Here is a custom keyboard layout which is US International but tagged as French. So in Word and other apps which switch spellcheck with the keyboard, this one should keep French spellcheck. Try it and let me know.

Input Sources only changes the keyboard layout. Apparently you didn't read the page I linked.

See: Change the language your Mac uses - Apple Support

System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources

PS For an app which I remember is really good at multilingual writing, have a look at Nisus Writer Pro

https://www.nisus.com/pro/feature_languages.php