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I develop a language learning tool that uses flags for languages extensively. I know that they have flaws. The problem is, there isn't any better pictorial rep

I develop a language learning tool that uses flags for languages extensively. I know that they have flaws. The problem is, there isn't any better pictorial representation, and they work well enough that it's better than not having one. For some languages they work very well (e.g. Swedish), for others there may technically be ambiguity but it's clear enough (e.g. the Union Jack for English), and some are more difficult and rely on convention (e.g. the Egyptian flag for Arabic). The landing page (https://nuenki.app https://nuenki.app) has a cloud of flags of the supported languages. It's an information dense, easy to scan way of seeing whether your language is supported. Sure, it's not technically 100% accurate, but what's the alternative?

bdhcuidbebe 2y ago
Flags for languages dont even work with one of the largest countries, India. They have about 20 official languages that var greatly. Then of course the multitude of languages spoken in many european languages such as Spain (catalan, gallician, basque). Or the latin american variation. Or what about Switzerland who dont have their own language (they speak french, german, italian and romanch). Even your example of Sweden is naive, as we have Swedish, Finnish, Sapmi, Meänkieli and I would argue Älvdalska is another proper language too, even if it dont have official status. Its a very flawed idea and no matter how pretty it may look, it cant map to reality and is just misleading at best.
- tyre 2y ago
  If someone see's the spanish flag on a language learning site, they're going to know it's spanish. No one looks at that and think, "hmm, no, I don't want to learn basque." It may be technically correct, but it's pretty obvious to people what it means. It's extremely common.
  - bdhcuidbebe 2y ago
    Its only being reinforced due to this kind of dumb presentation.
    - immibis 2y ago
      that is literally how icons work yes
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  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.
  - bdhcuidbebe 2y ago
    wikipedia, google translate
    - zmgsabst 2y ago
      Google Translate only supports French and French (Canada), not French (Swiss) — at least that I can see.
      - bdhcuidbebe 2y ago
        Swiss french is not as much of a distinct variation, rather a dialect very similar to Belgian french.
        rrr_oh_man 2y ago
        Try arguing this with a Swiss linguist. :)
  - bawolff 2y ago
    Here is the list of wikipedia languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix Not to mention the software is translated into more (you can go to preferences to see the full list), wikipedia just makes the practical decision that there is no point having british, american and canadian english as separate projects, but you can chose any of them for the software interface (interestingly there are separate wikipedia projects for https://sco.wikipedia.org https://sco.wikipedia.org https://jam.wikipedia.org https://jam.wikipedia.org and https://ang.wikipedia.org https://ang.wikipedia.org) Wikipedia has more languages then there are countries.
- cco 2y ago
  In your experience, what's the better option for an iconographic representation?
  - bdhcuidbebe 2y ago
    Not using icon, but using names
- ludwik 2y ago
  I don't think anybody claims that it is not a flawed idea. From what I understand from this thread, people who use flags to represent languages fully acknowledge that it is a flawed idea - the problem is that they lack an alternative solution in some contexts (for example, those that require high information density).
- Alex-Programs 2y ago
  India is definitely a difficult one. I'm using it to represent Hindi, and that's the one that makes me the most uncomfortable, because there are so many languages. I think the intent is reasonably clear, but if all countries were that ambigious, I'd avoid flags. Nuenki supports European Spanish (though now you mention it, I ought to make that clearer). If it were American Spanish, I'd probably use Mexico. I handle Portuguese that way. Switzerland is easy, because I have no need to include their flag. German is covered by Germany (yes, I know of Austria), French by France, etc. And I'm highly unlikely to add Romansh, if only because it'd be very difficult to translate with good quality. I would if I could though, I find it fascinating. For a flag, I'd find an online Romansh community and ask what flag people would find most respectful + representative, or if people would prefer I forgo it. You argue that it's misleading. I see where you're coming from. It isn't perfectly explicit and unambiguous. However, I don't think it's misleading in practice. Nobody looks at a Spanish flag and thinks it's denoting Catalan - I'd probably use a regional flag there - nor do people look at a Union Jack or an American flag and go "no idea what that's for". When looking to see if Nuenki supports Finnish, nobody looks for the Swedish flag. They look for the Finnish flag. People know what the stereotypical flags are, particularly when they're learning that language. So imo it's about absolute precision vs UX, and the UX of reading through a textual list of languages is awful. It's a complete pain to scan through without any kind of visual indicator. That's why, in practice, everyone uses flags. I didn't previously use flags so widely. Adding them everywhere (e.g. the dropdowns on the demo) was a result of feedback from people who felt it would make it nicer to use. Also, they're generally alongside the full name (aside from the aforementioned cloud), to clear up any ambiguity.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  > Flags for languages dont even work with one of the largest countries, India. They have about 20 official languages that var greatly. Curious, do Indian websites just never use flags then? Or do they use flags for the states within India? Because at a quick glance, it seems like there is a general mapping of languages to one or more states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_and_union_territories_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_and_union_territories_o... Very similar to the world situation.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    This doesn’t really work, though, because while languages are vaguely correlated to regions of the country they don’t match up with entities that have flags. It’s like if the US south had a language common there: what icon would you use? Alabama? It’s also worth noting that just because a language is used in a particular region doesn’t mean it is actually dominant. Coming back to the US, it would be kind of like marking the American southwest as “Spanish” because a lot of people speak it there, and many at home, but even while most conversations in public happen in English.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - sterlind 2y ago
      > It’s like if the US south had a language common there: what icon would you use? Having grown up in the South, the Stars and Bars would be a depressingly popular choice.
- jamager 2y ago
  However, the mapping normally is from language to flag, not the other way around. German -> Germany, French -> France, Swedish -> Sweden. It's not perfect, but 99% of times it communicates what is meant to communicate, which is more than what you can say of many icons.
mikedelfino 2y ago
I checked the website and, at least at the combo box on the landing page, it already has the language name! I guess that you could just go without the flag there, and it'd still work. I'm curious though, what flag would you use for English? Would it depend on whether you spell gray or grey? Duolingo uses the United States of America flag, so there's that.

bdhcuidbebe 2y ago

Flags for languages dont even work with one of the largest countries, India. They have about 20 official languages that var greatly. Then of course the multitude of languages spoken in many european languages such as Spain (catalan, gallician, basque). Or the latin american variation. Or what about Switzerland who dont have their own language (they speak french, german, italian and romanch). Even your example of Sweden is naive, as we have Swedish, Finnish, Sapmi, Meänkieli and I would argue Älvdalska is another proper language too, even if it dont have official status. Its a very flawed idea and no matter how pretty it may look, it cant map to reality and is just misleading at best.

tyre 2y ago
If someone see's the spanish flag on a language learning site, they're going to know it's spanish. No one looks at that and think, "hmm, no, I don't want to learn basque." It may be technically correct, but it's pretty obvious to people what it means. It's extremely common.
- bdhcuidbebe 2y ago
  Its only being reinforced due to this kind of dumb presentation.
  - immibis 2y ago
    that is literally how icons work yes
rrr_oh_man 2y ago
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.
- bdhcuidbebe 2y ago
  wikipedia, google translate
  - zmgsabst 2y ago
    Google Translate only supports French and French (Canada), not French (Swiss) — at least that I can see.
    - bdhcuidbebe 2y ago
      Swiss french is not as much of a distinct variation, rather a dialect very similar to Belgian french.
      - rrr_oh_man 2y ago
        Try arguing this with a Swiss linguist. :)
- bawolff 2y ago
  Here is the list of wikipedia languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:SiteMatrix Not to mention the software is translated into more (you can go to preferences to see the full list), wikipedia just makes the practical decision that there is no point having british, american and canadian english as separate projects, but you can chose any of them for the software interface (interestingly there are separate wikipedia projects for https://sco.wikipedia.org https://sco.wikipedia.org https://jam.wikipedia.org https://jam.wikipedia.org and https://ang.wikipedia.org https://ang.wikipedia.org) Wikipedia has more languages then there are countries.
cco 2y ago
In your experience, what's the better option for an iconographic representation?
- bdhcuidbebe 2y ago
  Not using icon, but using names
ludwik 2y ago
I don't think anybody claims that it is not a flawed idea. From what I understand from this thread, people who use flags to represent languages fully acknowledge that it is a flawed idea - the problem is that they lack an alternative solution in some contexts (for example, those that require high information density).
Alex-Programs 2y ago
India is definitely a difficult one. I'm using it to represent Hindi, and that's the one that makes me the most uncomfortable, because there are so many languages. I think the intent is reasonably clear, but if all countries were that ambigious, I'd avoid flags. Nuenki supports European Spanish (though now you mention it, I ought to make that clearer). If it were American Spanish, I'd probably use Mexico. I handle Portuguese that way. Switzerland is easy, because I have no need to include their flag. German is covered by Germany (yes, I know of Austria), French by France, etc. And I'm highly unlikely to add Romansh, if only because it'd be very difficult to translate with good quality. I would if I could though, I find it fascinating. For a flag, I'd find an online Romansh community and ask what flag people would find most respectful + representative, or if people would prefer I forgo it. You argue that it's misleading. I see where you're coming from. It isn't perfectly explicit and unambiguous. However, I don't think it's misleading in practice. Nobody looks at a Spanish flag and thinks it's denoting Catalan - I'd probably use a regional flag there - nor do people look at a Union Jack or an American flag and go "no idea what that's for". When looking to see if Nuenki supports Finnish, nobody looks for the Swedish flag. They look for the Finnish flag. People know what the stereotypical flags are, particularly when they're learning that language. So imo it's about absolute precision vs UX, and the UX of reading through a textual list of languages is awful. It's a complete pain to scan through without any kind of visual indicator. That's why, in practice, everyone uses flags. I didn't previously use flags so widely. Adding them everywhere (e.g. the dropdowns on the demo) was a result of feedback from people who felt it would make it nicer to use. Also, they're generally alongside the full name (aside from the aforementioned cloud), to clear up any ambiguity.
crazygringo 2y ago
> Flags for languages dont even work with one of the largest countries, India. They have about 20 official languages that var greatly. Curious, do Indian websites just never use flags then? Or do they use flags for the states within India? Because at a quick glance, it seems like there is a general mapping of languages to one or more states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_and_union_territories_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_and_union_territories_o... Very similar to the world situation.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  This doesn’t really work, though, because while languages are vaguely correlated to regions of the country they don’t match up with entities that have flags. It’s like if the US south had a language common there: what icon would you use? Alabama? It’s also worth noting that just because a language is used in a particular region doesn’t mean it is actually dominant. Coming back to the US, it would be kind of like marking the American southwest as “Spanish” because a lot of people speak it there, and many at home, but even while most conversations in public happen in English.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - sterlind 2y ago
    > It’s like if the US south had a language common there: what icon would you use? Having grown up in the South, the Stars and Bars would be a depressingly popular choice.
jamager 2y ago
However, the mapping normally is from language to flag, not the other way around. German -> Germany, French -> France, Swedish -> Sweden. It's not perfect, but 99% of times it communicates what is meant to communicate, which is more than what you can say of many icons.

mikedelfino 2y ago

I checked the website and, at least at the combo box on the landing page, it already has the language name! I guess that you could just go without the flag there, and it'd still work. I'm curious though, what flag would you use for English? Would it depend on whether you spell gray or grey? Duolingo uses the United States of America flag, so there's that.