[html4all] Linguistic variants in a single document ?

[Philip TAYLOR]

A recent e-mail exchange has brought the following
thoughts come to mind --

As a native British speaker, I would prefer
to read web pages in <Br.E> (as opposed to <Am.E>),
so I wonder :

(How) can one mark up, in HTML, a single
document in such a way that the user's language
preferences (as specified in the browser's
configuration, or as inherited from the
operating system configuration) can be used to
select from a set of possible linguistics variants ?

For example, (how) could I currently express

	"a couple <Br.E>of</> occasions"
	
		or

	"We undertake this <Am.E>endeavor</><Br.E>endeavour</> because"
		

I am 99.95% confident that this is not currently
possible; is it something that could usefully
be considered for the future ?

Incidentally, although the second example is probably
not of any benefit to those using speech synthesis or
similar, the first example is relevant to all, since
"a couple occasions" really jars to the (British)
English ear; other examples are "I wrote <Br.E>to</> him",
"Two thousand <Br.E>and</> seven",
"<Am.E>cyclical</><Br.E>cyclic</>", etc.

** Phil.