Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, for English you should obviously use the flag of the largest country that uses it as an official language: India.
Canada?
TIL Canada is actually larger than India and it's not just a projection artifact!
Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows
81–90 of 328 posts
Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows
#82Personally I prefer rendering country codes over flags because it allows me to spot and scold anyone who uses the flag of Chad to represent Romania (they look pretty much the same as emojis).
Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows
#83Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.
On the other hand, this is very helpful when things are already in a language you don't understand.
Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows
#84Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.
I feel obliged to point out that while flags do not represent languages perfectly, there is no good, user-facing symbolic alternative for languages. No, people don't know the ISO codes for their languages. No, you can't use the full name, since some languages have very long names. No, a single 'languages' icon isn't enough, you often need to symbolically represent individual languages. For the most common languages,…
Google Translator lists languages' names, and the list is pretty reasonable. I'm confident that designers could make it work even on interfaces where the language is a more subtle option.
Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
But flags almost sometimes map roughly to languages within my limited experience! For example there's only one kind of English and it belongs to the USA. Also Spanish, that must be USA too, even if some unimportant countries speak it. Brazil can have Portuguese because I don't know where Angola is. The Indian flag can represent Hindi, but also the 22 scheduled languages, but not the other official language because I…
So - for English, I'll use the Jamaican flag. - for Russian, I'll use the flag of South Ossetia. - for German, I'll use the flag of Austria. - for French, I'll use the Malinese Flag. - for Dutch, I'll use flag of Suriname. just see how happy people are with this ;)
That's not the only issue. India has over 1,600 native languages and 22 "official" ones. Which language would a country like that represent?
What about colonial nations like the US or most of South America. Do the native languages not get a symbol because a colonial history resulted in a foreign language being the dominant one?
Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Give me one example of a website that supports, let's say, three of the 20+ Indian languages, Catalan, Galician, Basque, Swiss French, Swiss German, Swiss Italian, and Romansh. You will have a hard time, even on Wikipedia. For most people, flags absolutely are the best shorthand for the language of the same name.
wikipedia, google translate
Google Translate only supports French and French (Canada), not French (Swiss) — at least that I can see.
Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows
#87Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.
Yeah, but there is definitely no better option. If I come across a site that is not in English, but I see a little flag somewhere, that is a very good indicator that that's the place I can go and change the language to English. (Happens a lot more when you're travelling in a non-English-speaking country.)
https://languageicon.org/ strikes me as a plausibly better option for the scenario you describe.
Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows
#88Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.
I feel obliged to point out that while flags do not represent languages perfectly, there is no good, user-facing symbolic alternative for languages. No, people don't know the ISO codes for their languages. No, you can't use the full name, since some languages have very long names. No, a single 'languages' icon isn't enough, you often need to symbolically represent individual languages. For the most common languages,…
Places like Wikipedia have a list of languages spelled out in the orthography most used for the written version of that language.
I don't see what the problem with that is. Universally understandable to anyone who knows the written version of their language
Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows
#89Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.
Should there be emojis to represent languages? Maybe it could be a new group. I'd rather not use the flag shape, maybe a circle with the 2 letter code and a background with the colors from the flag usually used to represent that language, mainly because people is already used to scan the lists looking for those colors.
I really wish there were. It'd make things a lot easier for me!
There aren't really existing unambiguous language icons, at least for the majority of languages, so it'd be less about making them a formal emoji and more about actually inventing + "legitimising" new icons so they can be broadly and uncontroversially used.
I doubt that'd happen in practice - there just isn't a pressing need, and you'd need an enormous (and likely controversial) public education campaign to make them adoptable - but it would be a neat design problem. r/vexillogy would have a field day.
Re: Some flag emojis aren’t working on Chrome on Windows
#90Since the article mentions using flags to represent languages, I feel obliged to point out that flags do not represent languages, so probably don’t use flags to represent languages.
Should there be emojis to represent languages? Maybe it could be a new group. I'd rather not use the flag shape, maybe a circle with the 2 letter code and a background with the colors from the flag usually used to represent that language, mainly because people is already used to scan the lists looking for those colors.
no, cause nobody would understand them. Words exist, and websites that needs to show a lot of languages (google translate, deepl, wikipedia etc) just show you a list of names. It's really the easiest solution, cause people are _also_ really used to scanning text for their own language.