British English (en-gb) spell checker treats ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) as errors

[Andrew Rendle]

Binary package hint: thunderbird

When set to use the British English spell check dictionary, Thunderbird treats 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. as incorrectly spelled when the spell checker is run (although they are not marked with the "as you type" red underlines.) The spell checker suggests "St", "Nd", "Rd", "Th" as alternatives, but these are not correct (they should be lower-case.)
Interestingly, if I change the language to US English, "2nd" is still identified as wrong, with suggestions of "ND" and "Nd" (in that order) but the others are seen as correct with the US English dictionary. And if I switch to the Australian English dictionary, all are treated as incorrect again (as with en-gb) but it doesn't even suggest "Nd" or "Th" (but does have the "St" and "Rd" suggestions.)

Steps to reproduce:
1. Start writing a new email in Thunderbird
2. Set spell-check language to "English (GB)"
3. In the message body, type "1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th"
4. Click Spell to run the spell checker

Expected result: They should be accepted as correct spellings.
Actual result: All five are identified as incorrect spellings by the spell checker (but not by the "as you type" red underlines.)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Jan 14 13:15:54 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: mozilla-thunderbird 2.0.0.23+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-17.54-generic
SourcePackage: thunderbird
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-17-generic i686

[papukaija (papukaija)]

Confirming in Natty.

[Dan Small (kam3bombh9-dan-wph05ilav2)]

Confirming in Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS (Precise Pangolin)

  thunderbird (Ubuntu) → aspell-en (Ubuntu)
  pyenchant (Ubuntu) → aspell-en (Ubuntu)