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Flags Are Not Languages

flagsarenotlanguages.com

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Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#161

Post by ithkuil »

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.

Learning many writing systems is my hobby.

But despite having learned the Georgian alphabet and being able to read მიღება as "migheba" I still am none the wiser since I have no idea what that means.

Today my kid bought a pokemon toy and the box was only in Japanese. I proudly deciphered ニャスパー as "nyas'paa" but my son only recognized the name when I googled it and found the English spelling "nyasper" (we're not native English speakers so perhaps the translation would have been more obvious to some of you).

Long story short: knowing writing systems is super fun but often you need to know more about the actual language. That's especially true with languages like Arabic that don't spell out all the vowels

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#162

Post by morbicer »

lolinder wrote: post #100
morbicer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they call the language they speak? French? You know where the language originates and why is it called French? I kinda understand some of the arguments and sensitivities and some examples on the website are dumb but it's also dumb to deny that French language can't be associated with France. I bet people in Quebec and Niger can make the connection when they open the dropdown that this will be the language they…

> The bigger conondrum might be which flag to choose for Arabic. By your logic I'm not sure why this is a conundrum—Saudi Arabia, of course! Arabic is actually the perfect example of why flags for languages are problematic—just because two countries share a language doesn't mean they're on good terms with each other. That's easy to see with Arabic because tensions in the Middle East are always in the news. You know i…

I feel the colonial resentments and I am not a yeehaa proponent of flags.

But let's be honest: will the translation of the page be in idiomatic Nigerian French? It's mostly likely going to be French French.

I am not that offended by US flag for English because the spelling will most likely be American and thus different from UK and lot of other Commonwealth countries.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#163

Post by Someone »

I would guess Apple removed the flags to sidestep thorny geopolitical issues.

For example, China and Taiwan will disagree on what flag to show for the language they share.

Also, the article shows two different parts of the UI. For Monterey, it shows the UI for adding a language, for the older OS, that for adding a keyboard layout.

That UI still has ‘icons’ (a dark rounded rectangle with letters in it, for example “SQ” for “Albanian” or “USPC” for “US International – PC”) in Monterey.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#164

Post by eloisius »

grumbel wrote: post #138
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…

Hidden deeply in browser settings because the browser should inherit the locale from your OS, right?

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#165

Post by dTP90pN »

Ekaros wrote: post #29
jackvalentine wrote: post #24

I fairly often find myself deciding between flag of the United Kingdom or the flag of the United States of America as a choice for ‘English’ wondering will this just be different spelling or will there be some other ill effect of choosing the wrong one. I live in neither country, of course.

Just be neutral and go for India. Or Australia. Or randomly pick from all English speaking countries...

The real solution is obviously to use geolocation to find the closest country which officially uses the individual language(s).

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#166

Post by eloisius »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #135
quadhome wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At least to a Chinese reader it’s immediately obvious. 文 is the suffix to all written languages. 中文 英文 法文 西班牙文 etc.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#167

Post by amadeuspagel »

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.

Also, the Accept-Language header supports multiple languages. I want to read everything I can in the original, rather then having everything translated, but even websites that use the language header often only consider the first entry.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#168

Post by huygens6363 »

lolinder wrote: post #128
huygens6363 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Some flag, US, Chinese, I don’t care, signifies “language” in the context of software . That is an easy, universal UI pattern. I don’t see the need to upend this for some notion of offense or other type of PCness.

> some notion of offense or other type of PCness As just one example of what we're talking about, let's take Ireland: after generations of cultural oppression England caused a famine in Ireland that reduced the population by at least 20% between millions of deaths and millions of immigrants. Ireland still hasn't recovered its population to the pre-famine levels. The Irish are literally still recovering from their abu…

Well, good sir, you actually got through my thick skull. I have a soft spot for the Irish. I understand.

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#169

Post by armagon »

This is interesting as I've been working on localisation for an app I've made. It's in Electron. I find it super frustrating that when I ask for `navigator.languages` I get 'en-US' first, even though I have my language set to 'en-CA' (which showed up second, I think). I can only assume they were working around some dumb web software that didn't realise that if it didn't see your specific language code it should fall back to a more generic language. Anyone got tips for getting the most specific language code in the general case?

Re: Flags Are Not Languages

#170

Post by watwut »

eloisius wrote: post #164
grumbel wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hidden deeply in browser settings because the browser should inherit the locale from your OS, right?

Absolutely not. I don't want the same language on all apps and the one I have on apps is not necessary the one I want on your site.
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