- From: Jens Meiert <jens.meiert@erde3.com>
- Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 09:19:50 +0100 (MET)
- To: "Yvette P. Hoitink" <y.p.hoitink@heritas.nl>
- Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Hi Yvette, > http://www.heritas.nl/wcag/language.html first of all, I'm not sure if 'Cadeaushoppen' is an English term (CMIIW), sounds either Dutch or like a made-up word to me. -- So, with due respect, I think that this topic is nearly absolutely irrelevant for the WAI work since you only address a phenomenon known in many (European) countries, where anglicisms still become more popular from year to year. I also wonder what you intend with your article, do you want to ban anglicisms from your language? This ain't a WAI task. Do you want to get rid of them in all languages except English itself? This ain't a WAI task, either. Do you want to encourage authors to highlight each non-native term either visually or semantically (or both)? This just won't do (and IMO ain't needed, either, since it ain't your task to block the natural flow of language -- or is it)? The entire issue is a thing you should leave to each publisher, and you should instead simply do it better, if you are that concerned about the use of anglicisms (or whatever else) -- me, I often use English terms at work (since there often are no other sufficient terms for some things; even take 'email', should I say 'elektronische Post'?), but when creating articles or using my native language (German), I use them rarely since I know how to articulate. Next, better suggest how to associate external sources (e.g. hyperlinks) using other languages than their referrer, and even this is a problem the HTML WG has solved or is about to solve. It doesn't matter to me if I misunderstood you, but the entire topic is a thing I've no comprehension for since there are IMHO only people pinning down what is natural. It's a self-regulating phenomenon, or do you fear the Dutch language will disappear in 2004? Last but not least, I agree (although I didn't see any corresponding and/or explicit statement in your article) that Web site owners may encounter problems using an x language soup on their sites, but this is a thing where neither you nor the WAI WG has any bearing on, this maybe requires only some common sense. And maybe you started a biased analysis, scrutinizing only international companies. Best regards, Jens. PS. Please excuse the provocative tenor in this post, but I claim there are above all several constructive assertions. -- Jens Meiert Interface Architect http://meiert.com/
Received on Thursday, 4 December 2003 03:19:51 UTC