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Flags Are Not Languages

flagsarenotlanguages.com

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Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#131

Post by marcosdumay »

masklinn wrote: post #114
bjackman wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I browse the web in multiple languages. I don't even know how to change my Accept-Language headers. I prefer to be able to just choose the language while I'm browsing. That also lets me easily see what languages the site actually offers.

I also browse the web in multiple languages. Accept-Language follows the language selection of the browser or OS (sadly Apple is kinda stupid so they only use the first language configured in system preferences, if you configure multiple languages in Firefox's preferences it actually follows that). I absolutely love when websites randomly pick a language I can't read, which is not anywhere in my accept-languages (whi…

> It's even better when I need to go through a cookie popup I can't bypass in that language I can't read without a language selector before I can do anything else.

But if you could read, you wouldn't consent to it...

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#132

Post by jjp »

ryandrake wrote: post #101

At least on the web, you shouldn't even be using your web UI to change the language in the first place! Browsers already send Accept-Language: headers. Just use that. Why complicate your UI? It's at best redundant and at worst annoying when a web site chooses to ignore my preference and rolls its own.

It's also terribly annoying when I've found a page through a search engine and the site decides that I don't want that language. Navigates me to the language of my accept-language, decides that's on a different domain which is managed by a different team/CMS and doesn't have or can't find the page I was looking for in the first place.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#133

Post by throwaway22032 »

My 2c:

I think that symbols are useful in this case and that the number of potentially ambiguous/offensive situations is low enough that scrapping flags is worse overall.

Bathroom signs come to mind. Yes, not all men wear trousers, yes, not all women wear skirts, if you swing that way, perhaps not all men are men. Some of us don't even have legs. But you know what it means, it's standardised, and it saves us all a ton of time not having to do a double take at a clever bathroom door with an art project on it, in the same way that a flag in the corner of a webpage immediately draws the eye.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#134

Post by masklinn »

marcosdumay wrote: post #131
masklinn wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also browse the web in multiple languages. Accept-Language follows the language selection of the browser or OS (sadly Apple is kinda stupid so they only use the first language configured in system preferences, if you configure multiple languages in Firefox's preferences it actually follows that). I absolutely love when websites randomly pick a language I can't read, which is not anywhere in my accept-languages (whi…

> It's even better when I need to go through a cookie popup I can't bypass in that language I can't read without a language selector before I can do anything else. But if you could read, you wouldn't consent to it...

I often can't even consent, because I don't even know what button would be "Yes sure I'll sell my soul to you for no consideration that sounds great".

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#135

Post by thaumasiotes »

quadhome wrote: post #8
peterhi wrote: post #4

But the flag was useful to show in the ui where the language setting was. This is especially useful when the language has been set to something I cannot read. I don't know which of 语言设定 and 重置设备 will allow me to set the language back to English. Also flags in the menu means that I can find English easier than 英语

Wikipedia uses a “文Ａ” icon; IMHO far better than a flag. What flag would you expect to see? As for finding the language in the menu, listening a language in the foreign language seems like bad design too. The menu should list “English” as an option! See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language#/languages

> Wikipedia uses a “文Ａ” icon; IMHO far better than a flag.

It's not exactly suggestive of a language selector. 文 means "text". "A" doesn't mean anything at all.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#136

Post by untech »

kuschku wrote: post #95
untech wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why using $ symbol to represent English is less correct than using the US flag? (Re: colors: see my suggestion to use these colorful icons to represent time zones)

If you differentiate between different types of english, it makes sense to show a US flag or UK flag for the different regional variations. If you have only one version per language, just show the flags side by side. UK/US/AU/NZ for english, DE/AT/CH for German, etc. On the other hand € stands for 20+ languages and $ means USD, NZD, CAD, many kinds of Peso and many other types of dollar.

How many flags would you use for English? If you want to use flags of the most populous countries where English is the primary language, the second country after the US is Nigeria (182 m people).

How many flags would you use for Spanish? French?

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#137

Post by randomdata »

wongarsu wrote: post #108
ryandrake wrote: post #101

At least on the web, you shouldn't even be using your web UI to change the language in the first place! Browsers already send Accept-Language: headers. Just use that. Why complicate your UI? It's at best redundant and at worst annoying when a web site chooses to ignore my preference and rolls its own.

I often want to change the language depending on the context of the website. Often you see machine translated text (in either direction) that's much less useful than the original. Also while I'm more familiar with many terms in my mother tongue, and some don't even have clear mappings to English, on many technical topics I'm much more familiar with the English terms. By all means default to the Accept-Language header…

You can change it by sending a different Accept-Language. It is per request, so you can send different ones to different hosts.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#138

Post by grumbel »

deepsun wrote: post #129

Still a lot of websites (including Google) ignore "Accept-Language" header, and show language based on my geolocated IP address. Dude, if I'm visiting Netherlands it doesn't mean I speak Dutch. At least I can guess some words cause it's Latin alphabet. But when I visited Georgia I had no idea what მიღება even sounds like.

That's really the core of the issue. Language switching is such a common thing that it should be part of Web infrastructure itself, not the individual Website, and it sort of is. But most Websites ignore those preferences and browsers have those settings hidden so deep away that no user will even be aware of them.

Having a little icon in your browser, not the Website, to switch language would make this issue largely go away. What symbol you use in the end doesn't really matter, the issue is that every site does it a little differently.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#139

Post by untech »

Nullabillity wrote: post #97
kuschku wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you differentiate between different types of english, it makes sense to show a US flag or UK flag for the different regional variations. If you have only one version per language, just show the flags side by side. UK/US/AU/NZ for english, DE/AT/CH for German, etc. On the other hand € stands for 20+ languages and $ means USD, NZD, CAD, many kinds of Peso and many other types of dollar.

Not to mention that many currencies don't have symbols at all.

Well, how many languages have flags? There are thousands of languages, but hundreds of countries. Surely, some languages would be left without a flag?

And this doesn’t affect just some "obscure" languages. For instance, what flag would you use for Arabic, an official UN language? What language does a flag of India, most populous language stand for?

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#140

Post by thaumasiotes »

marcosdumay wrote: post #127
greenish_shores wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The should be presented mainly, mostly and primarily in their native form. The form for currently set language should be additional. It's a no-brainer which makes demand for using flags unnecessary, almost making it absurd to use them. But, wait. 语言设定 is "Language settings" and 重置设备 is "Reset device". So the problem here is a bit different, right?

> So the problem here is a bit different, right? I wonder if flags fix that one in any way. It's the convention on sites to put the flags as a top-level element (but you could put "English" there just as easily). But on any device with a menu, the flags are usually only on the language list.

> but you could put "English" there just as easily

I've seen a website where the URL made it clear that the selected language was "en-US", but the flag displayed was the United Kingdom.

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