I work primarily in English but from time to time I work with whole documents in Portuguese and it would be really nice to be able to set the locale for the whole document. Within the right-click menu I can se the language for the paragraph, but on a long songbook, there are a whole lot of paragraphs.
There are two ways to address your question.
##Your document in mono-lingual
Quick and dirty: Tools>Language>For All Text>… or right-click in text
A little more subtle (like in 7269/how-to-change-language-in-whole-document: Tools>Options, Language Settings>Languages, select your default language and check For the current document only
Note that in some circumstances (when Asian or complex text layout is enabled), the setting is persistent even though you have checked For the current document only.
##Your document is multi-lingual
With direct formatting (= manual formatting), which is not the recommended way to work with Writer, Tools>Language>For Paragraph/Selection>… or right-click in text
A much better way is to use paragraph styles. You customize your paragraph style Font tab by telling Writer which language this style will format. You create one set of styles per language. Switching to another language is as simple as assigning a style to a paragraph or a run of words.
To show the community your question has been answered, click the ✓ next to the correct answer, and “upvote” by clicking on the ^ arrow of any helpful answers. These are the mechanisms for communicating the quality of the Q&A on this site. Thanks!
In case you need clarification, edit your question (not an answer which is reserved for solutions) or comment the relevant answer.