5 ms·

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. -

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 ;)

ahoka 2y ago
No, for English you should obviously use the flag of the largest country that uses it as an official language: India.
- toolslive 2y ago
  Canada?
  - riffraff 2y ago
    TIL Canada is actually larger than India and it's not just a projection artifact!
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    In area, yes. But then the China flag would represent a dozen languages. In population, no, the GP is correct.
Tijdreiziger 2y ago
As a Surinamese Dutch person, I fail to see any issues with this approach. ;)
culi 2y ago
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?
- SllX 2y ago
  Depends. The Navajo Nation and Cherokee Nation both have flags to use that could theoretically be incorporated into Unicode if they didn't draw the line at National flags, but you could always draw flag representations in SVG instead. But I also think this discussion has gone so far into the theoretical it's kind of ignored a very practical point: how many languages do you need to present in your software, because your software is actually localized in that language? Most software isn't going beyond the top two or three recognized languages in a given UN-recognized country (and even some of those are relatively obscure), and countries that have >1 languages usually share an official language with another country that uses it more predominantly. At this point in time, the economies of scale do not favor actually localizing software in 1600 different languages, so we don't. At all. In fact, the usual pattern for developers from Europe and the Americas is to favor their dominant language and localizing in other dominant languages that originated in Europe and some of their more popular variants, and then maybe also some combination of Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindu, Urdu, and Korean. So when you're presented with a number of languages and variants exceeding 30 in a list, flags probably aren't going to cut it anymore, but there's still some design space to use flags as language representations if you want.
  - culi 2y ago
    > Most software isn't going beyond the top two or three recognized languages in a given UN-recognized country There are over 30 languages in India with at least a million NATIVE speakers. 7 of those are in the top 30 most spoken languages in the world
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      Okay. But do you think the line you quoted is incorrect?
      - culi 2y ago
        It's irrelevant. The topic is a defense of equating a country flag with a language. Even if you have 2 in one country then you've already proved why its a bad idea
marc_abonce 2y ago
Sorry for the shameless plug, but I already made a reusable React component for that in case anybody needs it for their business: Npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-lang-selecta https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-lang-selecta Source code: https://github.com/MarcAbonce/react-lang-selecta https://github.com/MarcAbonce/react-lang-selecta
- Y_Y 2y ago
  Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Maybe because people don't realize you're in on the joke and that this is a parody package.
- mablopoule 2y ago
  That "Features included" selection is golden, the "Every file is called index to turn your code editor into a fun maze for the entire family to enjoy." item actually made me laugh out loud.
Y_Y 2y ago
Joking aside, I have heard of people deliberately doing a sort of inverse version of this. For example, if you live in Barcelona then Ubuntu's installer will detect you as being in Madrid's timezones and wanted to use Spain Spanish locale. If you insist that you're in Andorra you get an equivalent timezone and the Catalan locale (which is the preference for a lot of people, despite the bizarre way of reporting time).
- toolslive 2y ago
  I do this all the time: - I want proper English, - and Proper SI units, - and Euro as currency. So I put myself in Dublin.
  - extraduder_ire 2y ago
    I've heard this also enables some of the EU-mandated features in newer windows versions. Like being able to uninstall edge.

ahoka 2y ago

No, for English you should obviously use the flag of the largest country that uses it as an official language: India.

toolslive 2y ago
Canada?
- riffraff 2y ago
  TIL Canada is actually larger than India and it's not just a projection artifact!
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  In area, yes. But then the China flag would represent a dozen languages. In population, no, the GP is correct.

Tijdreiziger 2y ago

As a Surinamese Dutch person, I fail to see any issues with this approach. ;)

culi 2y ago

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?

SllX 2y ago
Depends. The Navajo Nation and Cherokee Nation both have flags to use that could theoretically be incorporated into Unicode if they didn't draw the line at National flags, but you could always draw flag representations in SVG instead. But I also think this discussion has gone so far into the theoretical it's kind of ignored a very practical point: how many languages do you need to present in your software, because your software is actually localized in that language? Most software isn't going beyond the top two or three recognized languages in a given UN-recognized country (and even some of those are relatively obscure), and countries that have >1 languages usually share an official language with another country that uses it more predominantly. At this point in time, the economies of scale do not favor actually localizing software in 1600 different languages, so we don't. At all. In fact, the usual pattern for developers from Europe and the Americas is to favor their dominant language and localizing in other dominant languages that originated in Europe and some of their more popular variants, and then maybe also some combination of Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindu, Urdu, and Korean. So when you're presented with a number of languages and variants exceeding 30 in a list, flags probably aren't going to cut it anymore, but there's still some design space to use flags as language representations if you want.
- culi 2y ago
  > Most software isn't going beyond the top two or three recognized languages in a given UN-recognized country There are over 30 languages in India with at least a million NATIVE speakers. 7 of those are in the top 30 most spoken languages in the world
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    Okay. But do you think the line you quoted is incorrect?
    - culi 2y ago
      It's irrelevant. The topic is a defense of equating a country flag with a language. Even if you have 2 in one country then you've already proved why its a bad idea

marc_abonce 2y ago

Sorry for the shameless plug, but I already made a reusable React component for that in case anybody needs it for their business: Npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-lang-selecta https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-lang-selecta Source code: https://github.com/MarcAbonce/react-lang-selecta https://github.com/MarcAbonce/react-lang-selecta

Y_Y 2y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Maybe because people don't realize you're in on the joke and that this is a parody package.
mablopoule 2y ago
That "Features included" selection is golden, the "Every file is called index to turn your code editor into a fun maze for the entire family to enjoy." item actually made me laugh out loud.

Y_Y 2y ago

Joking aside, I have heard of people deliberately doing a sort of inverse version of this. For example, if you live in Barcelona then Ubuntu's installer will detect you as being in Madrid's timezones and wanted to use Spain Spanish locale. If you insist that you're in Andorra you get an equivalent timezone and the Catalan locale (which is the preference for a lot of people, despite the bizarre way of reporting time).

toolslive 2y ago
I do this all the time: - I want proper English, - and Proper SI units, - and Euro as currency. So I put myself in Dublin.
- extraduder_ire 2y ago
  I've heard this also enables some of the EU-mandated features in newer windows versions. Like being able to uninstall edge.