Question #1
I looked up fossa in the french Encyclopedia and cat in the Spanish. Both have a very similar, user-friendly format as the school and public library kids versions. I can see how it would be useful if you were trying to learning a new language or if you had a patron that was trying to ask a question and didn't speak English very well. I am confused that milk (leche) shows up under animals in the Spanish version. I only know a couple of words so I had to use Google translate to check and, sure enough, it was an article about milk. (Update: To be fair I checked the french and PL kids versions and they both have milk too. I guess because it is an animal product?)
Question #2
You could use the read aloud option to get an idea of how to pronounce words if you were trying to learn another language but it is a computerized voice and there are better resources available.
Great observations! The foreign language encyclopedias are always fun. I looked at your comments about leche/milk and think you have answered the question--because mammals are mentioned in the article. World Book is a very literal search engine--you will notice if you search for "tiger" you will get someone who played for the Detroit Tigers along with the tiger article etc. Thanks for your post! Julie
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