Your questions is also related to spellcheck accuracy.
When I type multilingual documents, a decision has to be made about the “main” language, i.e. the most common language in the document. This language will be set as a reference in Default Style paragraph style (Font tab). With the inheritance rules, it will be cascaded to all other paragraph styles.
Next, if you have full paragraphs in another language, the best and simple choice is to create child paragraph styles to Text Body, only modifying the language in the Font tab. When you type your “foreign” paragraph, you just select the relevant paragraph style.
Finally, there remains the case when you quote something in a language different from the one in effect in the paragraph. To solve that, create one character style per language where the only changed attribute is Language in the Font tab. When you start your quotation, apply the relevant character style. At end of quotation, apply Default Style character style to revert to paragraph style attributes.
With the latest 6.x LO release, several character styles can be applied to the same sequence, but I don’t know if this an accident or a deliberately added feature. Consequently, you can also apply Emphasis or other character styles without the need to defined a exponential set of combined attributes character styles.
Multilingual documents have a complex nature and can’t be type “comfortably” without assistance of the styles engine. If you have not yet discovered the power of styles, it is time to start. Doing the above manipulations manually is a nightmare.
