Multiple languages in the lang attribute

It is my understanding that only one language can be specified in the
lang attribute of any tag. But in the following example several
languages may be specified in the http response:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-gb, es" />

as a solution of having known mixtures of languages, we could allow
multiple languages to be specified in the lang attribute (even though
this currently suggested by the standards):

<html xml:lang="en-gb, es" lang="en-gb, es">

should then both the british english and spanish dictionaries be loaded
to interpret the page? this could reduce the amount of work done by
editors and content management systems when creating bi-lingual or
tri-lingual sites. the reader could then read words out of their
respecitive dictionaries, search engines would have mutual access to
bilingual pages, plus other features i'm probably not even thinking of.

am i crazy for thinking this is a good idea?



--- Jon Hanna <jon@spin.ie> wrote:> 
> In principal you should generally use something
> like:
> 
> <p>
>   He is a <span lang="fr"
> xml:lang="fr">cordon-bleu</span> chef.
> </p>
> 
> In practice this could be impractical, and raises
> questions like "is 'cordon-bleu' English or French?"
> given that the term is used in English.

the question is, will the screen reader mangle it by
trying to pronounce it as an english word?  is it in
it's english dictionary with the correct
pronunciation?  i usually don't rely on that and make
sure it's pronounced correctly by telling the screen
reader to switch to french.

Received on Thursday, 21 November 2002 08:39:30 UTC