Comment 10 for bug 253769

I have identified a workaround that has been successful
for me as follows:

Open a terminal and enter

sudo apt-get install aspell aspell-en myspell-en-us

enter your password and it is fixed.

Please note that this is merely a workaround. The bug still remains.
As a bug fix, at the next update I recommend making the above
packages required dependencies.

Someone who has a standard GNOME (or maybe even KDE) ubuntu
installation (with OpenOffice) may have already had these packages
installed, but mine is an u-lite (FKA ubuntulite / LXDE / Openbox) on top
of a basic CLI ubuntu hardy install and these packages were not installed
causing my seamonkey spellchecker not to function (and would further
not allow me to install a spellcheck dictionary.)

Thanks.