Spell Check Failure

OpenOffice 3.1 and 3.2.1 suddenly started failing to spell check.  After some digging in the forums, I discovered that the language setting in the Font tab of the paragraph style dialog was [None].  Setting it to English - US fixed the problem.

I made the change in the Default paragraph style.  I am concerned that this will not carry into other documents.  Why can you not set the default language?  The check box does not appear to 'stick'  under Tools > Language > For All Text.