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Counterpoint to this website: it is convenient to have symbols to represent things. I don't see them suggesting anything better than flags.

davedx 2y ago
Only if the symbols make sense and there's a one-to-one relationship. This is a good move by Apple. Also, as a color blind person it is quite frustrating when people make content and use a flag emoji instead of a country name. Often mousing over doesn't work. Emojis are not semantic information.
- kapep 2y ago
  Every unicode emoji has an offical short description. As far as I know screenreaders handle them by reading that description. Mouse over to show that description in a tooltip sounds like a useful accessibilty feature. Does any browser or OS have that feature?
- bsza 2y ago
  > Only if the symbols make sense and there's a one-to-one relationship A flag paired with a name, which the UI used to show, is as close to that as you can get. You can’t get exactly that because languages are not mathematical objects, they are organic, amorphous, ever-changing living things.
  - davedx 2y ago
    :be_flag_emoji: Belgian Dutch :nl_flag_emoji: Dutch Dutch This doesn't make sense. The language is the same in each country, it uses the same official rules and grammar. Pairing languages with countries is just incorrect.
    - bsza 2y ago
      Pairing languages with anything is incorrect, because “language” is an ill-defined term, an attempt to loosely group together similar methods of communication. But not having a flag is even more incorrect, because then all you have is a list of words, and the meaning of a word depends on the... language! > The language is the same in each country Then you can select either. I don’t see how this detracts from the usability of the UI.
- jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
  I'll often paste flag emoji into the unicode program ( https://github.com/garabik/unicode https://github.com/garabik/unicode ) to get the country code letters for flags I don't recognise. It's pretty bad when people pick the wrong flag, because they don't know unicode, and are just looking at a tiny image on their phone screen.
- ianburrell 2y ago
  I think that browsers should show a little popup with the name of every emoji. It would be the alt text. I'm old and don't know what many of the emoji mean. Names wouldn't help with slang usage (see eggplant) but they would with the confusing ones and flags.
JimDabell 2y ago
Having the wrong symbol for something is worse than the inconvenience of not having a symbol.
- cabirum 2y ago
  Wrong symbols are everywhere. Ever seen a save button with a floppy disk icon? Its not about pedantic accuracy -- if something works, do not touch it.
  - ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
    But we are talking about using flags of countries for languages, which is a totally different "kind of wrong".
    - marginalia_nu 2y ago
      I'm not sure it is. Symbols operate by analogy, all language does. The question isn't "where are you from", but "which country speaks a language that is similar to how you speak". If you're living in the UK and are given the choice between Denmark and Australia, the latter is the more similar.
      - ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
        > The question isn't "where are you from", but "which country speaks a language that is similar to how you speak" Exactly. And that's the problem. There are countries where more than one language are officially spoken and differ (in the case of German enough that neither German nor Austrian German are usable, whereas German German is usable for Austrian German and vice versa) and these languages do not have their own flag - like Swiss German or Swiss Italian or Swiss French or do not have a flag in total, like (Swiss) Romansch. And no, Switzerland isn't the only "problematic" country and Romansch isn't the only language without a flag.
        marginalia_nu 2y ago
untech 2y ago
Well, why not use currency symbols to represent language? Same amount of correctness. If you like flags because they are colorful and memorable icons, you can use them to represent time zones. Much more convenient than some obscure "UTC+7" or "PT", isn’t it?
- James_K 2y ago
  > Same amount of correctness. Because a currency symbol is less correct (think $) and isn't as recognisable. Flags have colours that make them easier to pick out, and can be displayed at much smaller resolutions.
  - untech 2y ago
    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)
    - kuschku 2y ago
      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.
      - Nullabillity 2y ago
        Not to mention that many currencies don't have symbols at all.
        untech 2y ago
        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?
derefr 2y ago
People have proposed "language flags" before. In fact, Wikipedia even uses/maintains a set of them for Wiktionary entries (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Language_flags_list https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Language_flags_lis...) — although I've never personally noticed them in use in Wiktionary. (Does anyone have an example of a Wiktionary page that embeds one of these?)
- jwells89 2y ago
  I like this concept, but worry that the space afforded in common UI (e.g. 16px tray/menubar icons) isn’t sufficient to display the added detail. Perhaps “language symbols”, which take the idea of language flags and simplifies them into colored glyphs that render nicely at small sizes could be a solution.
- teg4n_ 2y ago
  It seems like these flags don’t uniquely represent specific languages. Look at how many languages have the flag of India.
andy99 2y ago
Right - a disk means save, and often it's downhill from there for many symbols in a new UI - various paint programs come to mind. I'm not from the UK but if I'm on a non-English site it's super obvious that a UK flag is likely to take me to English. If there's a clearer way, sure, but a lot of this seems to be a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, as an excuse to remind everyone that flags aren't languages which I don't think anybody was ever implying.
bee_rider 2y ago
Plus it is funny when the British have to pick the American flag to select the language that we stole from them. OTOH, this “which country best represents the language” question can provide unhappy geopolitical reminders to people, so I think we should not do it.
jackdorseyleft 2y ago
The world emoji or just a grid-sphere symbol are the closest I've seen to hit the mark where flags aren't visible. Same with the "cog" for settings. I always know where settings are even on my chinese co-worker's phone.

davedx 2y ago

Only if the symbols make sense and there's a one-to-one relationship. This is a good move by Apple. Also, as a color blind person it is quite frustrating when people make content and use a flag emoji instead of a country name. Often mousing over doesn't work. Emojis are not semantic information.

kapep 2y ago
Every unicode emoji has an offical short description. As far as I know screenreaders handle them by reading that description. Mouse over to show that description in a tooltip sounds like a useful accessibilty feature. Does any browser or OS have that feature?
bsza 2y ago
> Only if the symbols make sense and there's a one-to-one relationship A flag paired with a name, which the UI used to show, is as close to that as you can get. You can’t get exactly that because languages are not mathematical objects, they are organic, amorphous, ever-changing living things.
- davedx 2y ago
  :be_flag_emoji: Belgian Dutch :nl_flag_emoji: Dutch Dutch This doesn't make sense. The language is the same in each country, it uses the same official rules and grammar. Pairing languages with countries is just incorrect.
  - bsza 2y ago
    Pairing languages with anything is incorrect, because “language” is an ill-defined term, an attempt to loosely group together similar methods of communication. But not having a flag is even more incorrect, because then all you have is a list of words, and the meaning of a word depends on the... language! > The language is the same in each country Then you can select either. I don’t see how this detracts from the usability of the UI.
jimbobthrowawy 2y ago
I'll often paste flag emoji into the unicode program ( https://github.com/garabik/unicode https://github.com/garabik/unicode ) to get the country code letters for flags I don't recognise. It's pretty bad when people pick the wrong flag, because they don't know unicode, and are just looking at a tiny image on their phone screen.
ianburrell 2y ago
I think that browsers should show a little popup with the name of every emoji. It would be the alt text. I'm old and don't know what many of the emoji mean. Names wouldn't help with slang usage (see eggplant) but they would with the confusing ones and flags.

JimDabell 2y ago

Having the wrong symbol for something is worse than the inconvenience of not having a symbol.

cabirum 2y ago
Wrong symbols are everywhere. Ever seen a save button with a floppy disk icon? Its not about pedantic accuracy -- if something works, do not touch it.
- ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
  But we are talking about using flags of countries for languages, which is a totally different "kind of wrong".
  - marginalia_nu 2y ago
    I'm not sure it is. Symbols operate by analogy, all language does. The question isn't "where are you from", but "which country speaks a language that is similar to how you speak". If you're living in the UK and are given the choice between Denmark and Australia, the latter is the more similar.
    - ReleaseCandidat 2y ago
      > The question isn't "where are you from", but "which country speaks a language that is similar to how you speak" Exactly. And that's the problem. There are countries where more than one language are officially spoken and differ (in the case of German enough that neither German nor Austrian German are usable, whereas German German is usable for Austrian German and vice versa) and these languages do not have their own flag - like Swiss German or Swiss Italian or Swiss French or do not have a flag in total, like (Swiss) Romansch. And no, Switzerland isn't the only "problematic" country and Romansch isn't the only language without a flag.
      - marginalia_nu 2y ago

untech 2y ago

Well, why not use currency symbols to represent language? Same amount of correctness. If you like flags because they are colorful and memorable icons, you can use them to represent time zones. Much more convenient than some obscure "UTC+7" or "PT", isn’t it?

James_K 2y ago
> Same amount of correctness. Because a currency symbol is less correct (think $) and isn't as recognisable. Flags have colours that make them easier to pick out, and can be displayed at much smaller resolutions.
- untech 2y ago
  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)
  - kuschku 2y ago
    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.
    - Nullabillity 2y ago
      Not to mention that many currencies don't have symbols at all.
      - untech 2y ago
        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?

derefr 2y ago

People have proposed "language flags" before. In fact, Wikipedia even uses/maintains a set of them for Wiktionary entries (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Language_flags_list https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Language_flags_lis...) — although I've never personally noticed them in use in Wiktionary. (Does anyone have an example of a Wiktionary page that embeds one of these?)

jwells89 2y ago
I like this concept, but worry that the space afforded in common UI (e.g. 16px tray/menubar icons) isn’t sufficient to display the added detail. Perhaps “language symbols”, which take the idea of language flags and simplifies them into colored glyphs that render nicely at small sizes could be a solution.
teg4n_ 2y ago
It seems like these flags don’t uniquely represent specific languages. Look at how many languages have the flag of India.

andy99 2y ago

Right - a disk means save, and often it's downhill from there for many symbols in a new UI - various paint programs come to mind. I'm not from the UK but if I'm on a non-English site it's super obvious that a UK flag is likely to take me to English. If there's a clearer way, sure, but a lot of this seems to be a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, as an excuse to remind everyone that flags aren't languages which I don't think anybody was ever implying.

bee_rider 2y ago

Plus it is funny when the British have to pick the American flag to select the language that we stole from them. OTOH, this “which country best represents the language” question can provide unhappy geopolitical reminders to people, so I think we should not do it.

jackdorseyleft 2y ago

The world emoji or just a grid-sphere symbol are the closest I've seen to hit the mark where flags aren't visible. Same with the "cog" for settings. I always know where settings are even on my chinese co-worker's phone.