Language detection (was: Re: [WEB4LIB] Re: Even stranger AltaVista result

[Charles P. Hobbs]

On Wed, 17 Nov 1999, Even Flood wrote:

> 
> One more question - how does AltaVista decide which language?
> Is there some sort of automatic analysis and comparison to
> frequently used words on the site from some sort of word list?

That could be part of it. My guess is that it's based on the presence of
certain characters in the text, or, perhaps even more importantly, certain
combinations of characters. . ..
> 
>