# what's with the accent?

Category: Geeks r Us

## Post 1 by bea (I just keep on posting!) on Monday, 13-Apr-2009 14:22:10

Have jaws 10.0 demo version on my computer and for some reason the software changes to a british accent on certain web sites. Why does it do that? It is very annoying. Can I turn that feature off? Like I say, I havge a demo version running. Got it off the fredom scientific web site.

## Post 2 by wildebrew (We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?) on Monday, 13-Apr-2009 14:55:35

It's probably languge detection, use Jaws key and v to get into verbosity menu, then press l until you find language detection, hit space to turn it off.
You can also do this perminantly through config manager of course.
Cheers
-B

## Post 3 by TylerK (This site is so "educational") on Monday, 13-Apr-2009 20:27:11

Yeah, just what B said. It's because some sites are setting the lang attribute of the HTML tag to "en-uk" or possibly using &LT;meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-uk"/> or something like that. You can turn that off from Adjust JAWS Options (JawsKey+V).

## Post 4 by SunshineAndRain (I'm happily married, a mom of two and a fulltime college student.) on Tuesday, 14-Apr-2009 1:41:16

Yeah, one time I logged onto a site, and it started speaking French. Very charming. Lol.

## Post 5 by bea (I just keep on posting!) on Tuesday, 14-Apr-2009 7:06:16

thanks for the advice. I wonder why anybody would even use that feature.

## Post 6 by wildebrew (We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?) on Tuesday, 14-Apr-2009 9:11:21

Hmm, you don't know why French Jaws users want their French web pages read in their own language? Have you tried reading a foreign language with English Jaws or vice versa? It can be done, although it's not easy but this is a really cool feature. Not every Jaws user is English speaking, nor is every web page intended for English speaking audiances, believe it or not.

## Post 7 by Albanac (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Tuesday, 14-Apr-2009 10:10:18

It's also handy for us who speak more than one language. With me it's German and English, and learning others. So going to web pages to practice these languages is useful if not necessary. Shame you can't install other languages into JAWS though, like for the Asian languages. I'd love to practice Arabic properly like that.

## Post 8 by TylerK (This site is so "educational") on Tuesday, 14-Apr-2009 14:57:26

They should make that a feature--similar to language packs for Windows. Why haven't they done that already?

## Post 9 by Ukulele<3 (Try me... You know you want to.) on Wednesday, 15-Apr-2009 21:04:32

omg I knoooow! I wish they had Vietnamese jaws. It's so hard reading it with the regular jaws. Is it even available? lol I'm going to google it. haha I know they have Vietnamese braille which I can read but don't know about how a person from Vietnam accesses their computer.

## Post 10 by shadow of john (Veteran Zoner) on Thursday, 16-Apr-2009 17:38:55

um, if you people are using real speak solo direct with jaws, Japanese is supported, and so is korean, and it works for webpages. so that's nice and that. who US to UK thing on webpages happens because of the html thing that someone mensioned a few posts back.

## Post 11 by synthesizer101 (I just keep on posting!) on Friday, 27-Aug-2010 23:15:37

You can get some sapi5 voices for Vietnamese from www.vnspeech.com. I don't know how well they work, because I don't speak Vietnamese, only Chinese, Spanish, English, and hopefully learning German. On that note, have you ever gone to a series of websites that JAWS thinks is Japanese, turn off language detection, and have it turn back on in a second?

## Post 12 by Blue Velvet (I've got the platinum golden silver bronze poster award.) on Friday, 27-Aug-2010 23:51:55

I've never been to a website where there was a foreign language, but I have come across a few with the British accent. Thanks to those of you who told how to turn that off.

## Post 13 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Saturday, 28-Aug-2010 0:24:10

It's certainly an interesting feature but can cause surprise or be annoying at times. I know that I turned it off when I used to use JFW. Now, I use NVDA with the synth always set to Greek. The thing is that when it speaks English, except for the numbers, which it says in Greek, it pronounces everything correctly. So I really get the best of both worlds.

## Post 14 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Saturday, 28-Aug-2010 0:26:38

Actually, now that I think of it, ESpeak does sometimes switch languages but I think it's a bug here. It only seems to do it on facebook and it doesn't really seem to switch to a particular language but it does cut things off and act funny. This happens when I tab through greek text or eve Greek and English names on the site... Very strange, because I never know when it will happen. The only way to stop it is to go into preferences, voices and then switch back to Greek. I'd love to stop it from happening for good.

## Post 15 by Perestroika (Her Swissness) on Saturday, 28-Aug-2010 1:04:54

personally I use the british jaws because I dislike american accents. It's more of a state of mind for me. I'm not an american, my history isn't american, it's well firmly established in britain and I don't care if americans made it, I want it to sound british.
and thanks for telling me how I can stop it switching back to american.

## Post 16 by Eleni21 (I have proven to myself and the world that I need mental help) on Saturday, 28-Aug-2010 9:32:57

Yeah. I always used to put JFW on British too. I'm not that fond of the American accent either and it just sounds strange with Eloquence.

## Post 17 by GreenTurtle (Music is life. Love. Vitality.) on Saturday, 28-Aug-2010 17:35:19

I'm the opposite, I can't stand the Eloquence British accent. I don't know why, but I just have a hard time understanding it. My boyfriend uses it, and I find I have to slow it down way more than I would with the American accent.