In view of the foregoing, an improved handheld electronic device having a reduced keyboard provides facilitated language entry by making available to a user certain words that a user may reasonably be expected to enter. Incoming data, such as the text of a message, can be scanned for proper nouns, for instance, since such proper nouns might not already be stored in memory and might be expected to be entered by the user when, for example, forwarding or responding to the message. A proper noun can be identified, for instance, on the basis that it begins with an upper case letter. The proper nouns can be stored, for example, in memory that may, by way of further example, be a temporary dictionary.