[Aspell-user] Aspell uses a common English user dictionary for AE and BE

[Florian v. Savigny]

Dear list fellows,

I am a bit puzzled by aspell's behaviour regarding my personal
dictionary. I am using aspell through Emacs' user interface, which
passes it either "-d british", or "-d american", according to its own
documentation. While in itself, this does make the expected difference
(if I choose "british", spellings like "rationalise" will be OK; if I
choose "american", they will not), it seems to maintain only one
common English user dictionary (i.e. for both AE and BE). The latter
is called .aspell.en.pws and is updated with new words regardless of
whether I have chosen "british" or "american".

When I choose "deutsch" (German), a different personal dictionary is
modified (called .aspell.de.pws).

I tried to convince aspell to be more distinguishing by making two
copies of .aspell.en.pws and naming them .aspell.en_GB.pws and
.aspell.en_US.pws, respectively (and making .aspell.en.pws invisible
by renaming it). That didn't help; it simply created a new
.aspell.en.pws.

Finally, it seems it does not have to do with the Emacs interface: I
also tried 

aspell check -d en_US file.txt
aspell check -d en_GB file.txt

from the command line, which behaved as expected, but the behaviour
regarding the personal dictionary was still the same. It even created
an empty .aspell.en.pws when I did not insert any new words.

Can anyone point me out whether (and where) I can change this?

Many thanks for any help.

Regards,
Florian