Re: Foreign Words and Phrases

Jordan Reiter (jreiter@mail.slc.edu)
Tue, 23 Sep 1997 10:52:24 -0500 

Message-Id: <l03110703b04d94a9018e@[192.168.1.117]>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.96.970923153524.361I-100000@enoshima>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 10:52:24 -0500
To: "Martin J. =?iso-8859-1?Q?D=FCrst?="  <mduerst@ifi.unizh.ch>
From: Jordan Reiter <jreiter@mail.slc.edu>
Cc: Rob <wlkngowl@unix.asb.com>, www-html@w3.org
Subject: Re: Foreign Words and Phrases

=7FMartin J. D=FCrst felt an urge to reveal at 8:38 AM -0500 on 1997-09-23:
> > Using EM is deceptive and will throw off a speech renderer that might
> > speak the world with added volume. SPAN is more appropriate.
>
> That wouldn't be a mistake. There has to be some distinction between
> the case that a foreign word is used without italics/emphasis and the
> case it is emphasized as something special. Both cases exist, and it
> would be wrong to not distinguish them aurally.

Except that in the case of a (good) aural browser, the distinction would be
made in the clear change in prononciation.  After all, the important reason
to italicize a foriegn phrase is to make it distinct from the language
around it.  Using an aural browser, with the lang attribute set correctly,
this phrase will be pronounced differently, and *that* is what will make
the clearest difference.  Again, you can use the SPAN attribute for this,
with stylesheets, assuming that they create a way to pick up inside
attributes using stylesheets, ie (and assuming that I actually knew the
language codes by heart and put them in correctly here):

SPAN(en-US) { voice: "Obnoxious American" }
SPAN(it)    { voice: "ItalianFemale" }
SPAN(la)    { voice: "ScaryLatinInstructor" }

Each of these voices would, naturally, be designed to pronounce the phrases
indicated correctly.

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[                    Jordan Reiter                     ]
[            mailto:jreiter@mail.slc.edu               ]
[       "Don't you realize that intellectual people    ]
[        are all ignorant because they can't spray     ]
[        paint that small?"                            ]
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