6 ms·

> No, people don't know the ISO codes for their languages. As a canadian, i know what EN means. However when sites use flags its a mystery. Am i supposed to pi

> No, people don't know the ISO codes for their languages. As a canadian, i know what EN means. However when sites use flags its a mystery. Am i supposed to pick canada or is that "canadian french". Maybe im supposed to pick the american flag, but eww feel like a traitor and i want the u's in my words. Is it the british flag? I have no idea. Flags for languages are stupid. Not to mention for all those languages that are not the majority language in any country.

troad 2y ago
> As a canadian, i know what EN means. However when sites use flags its a mystery. As an Australian, I somehow manage not to be entirely baffled by a US/UK flag icon in a language screen. > Maybe im supposed to pick the american flag, but eww feel like a traitor and i want the u's in my words. The purpose of a language selection screen is not to stroke your ego?
- bawolff 2y ago
  > As an Australian, I somehow manage not to be entirely baffled by a US/UK flag icon in a language screen. As an australian, when was the last time the Australian flag was the incorrect choice for you? I'm going to guess never.
  - boredatoms 2y ago
    When is there ever an Australian flag to choose
- scrollaway 2y ago
  You’re saying this on HN, where plenty of people work on software affecting tens of millions of people. You wanna leave your phone number and explain your “well I ain’t offended” strategy to the next PM who’ll ask you about their users in Taiwan? The Russian speakers in Ukraine who saw their homes demolished by those who brandish the flag you’re not offended by? Maybe I should just invite you to my country of Belgium (four languages, not one of them being “the Belgian one”) for you to see what people here routinely think of those who can’t imagine the simple differences :)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - troad 2y ago
    I had initially posted a joke reply to this, but I'll post a serious one: I care a lot more about getting necessary services to elderly, semi-literate Russian-speaking babushkas fleeing Ukraine, by giving them an obvious indicator (on e.g. a name tag) that someone can speak to them, help them, then I care about your completely absurd, concocted 'well akshuallys'.
    - bawolff 2y ago
      Guess the Crimean Tatar speakers just get screwed?
      - troad 2y ago
        Yes, sadly, by Stalin and Putin, not by the choice of language symbols. Crimean Tartars, by the way, are a great example of a people that have their own flag, despite that flag not being the official flag of any independent nation-state. If someone is a speaker of Crimean Tartar, and working with Ukrainian refugees, they should add that flag to their name tag too.
    - scrollaway 2y ago
      I work in Brussels with a lot of Ukrainians — both fighters and refugees. I’ve made this a part of my day to day life since the full scale invasion. We until recently even shared an office with the Ukrainian Voices refugee committee, in fact. Seeing as you say you care about getting services to those people, let’s talk about putting your money where your keyboard is. Reach out via my profile and let me know how much you’d like to contribute.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
esperent 2y ago
Just wait because all official EU sites now use the Irish flag to represent English, and it's getting more common in other websites made in Europe. As an Irish person I can't help feeling a frisson of satisfaction. But as a developer, this is just asking for confusion, especially since the Irish flag is already confusing enough. I mean, we could have a beautiful white harp on a green background representing Irish culture. The Welsh got a dragon... But no, it's a political statement from 120 years ago represented in three boring vertical stripes, just like everyone else's flag. It's identical (ok, mirrored) to the Ivory cost flag. It's the same three colors as the India flag, rotated 90 degrees, which itself is very similar to the Niger flag. And if you squint, or just don't know your flags well, it could easily be the Italian flag. It's a terrible choice to represent a language.
- philwelch 2y ago
  Shouldn’t the Irish flag represent Irish Gaelic though?
  - esperent 2y ago
    English is an official language of Ireland, and by far the most wildly spoken. Gaeilge is also an official language but <4% of Irish people use it as their main language. However, this is another reason why flags aren't a good choice for languages. It works for some of the main languages - German, French, etc. where there's a clear one to one link between originating country's flag and language. It's less clear for English - the UK flag, the US flag, the Irish flag and apparently even the Canadian flag gets used. It's basically impossible to choose a flag for minority languages, and many countries have multiple official and widely spoken unofficial languages. What flag should represent Balinese, for example? I don't have a better solution, and if your site is translated to just a couple of languages it's fine. But I guess as machine translation gets closer to perfect and very cheap, it'll become more common to have lots of translations.
    - philwelch 2y ago
      If somebody said to me, “I speak American”, I would infer that they meant the American dialect of the English language. If they said “I speak Irish”, I would infer that they meant Irish Gaelic. Similarly, if I saw a Welsh flag on a language selection UI, I would assume that it represented the Welsh Brythonic language even though most Welsh people speak English. Unicode makes this hard (though it does provide the Welsh flag) but in principle you could solve this for some minority languages. For instance if you wanted to support Catalan, just use the flag of Catalonia, since they have one. You don’t need to have a country to have a flag, and you don’t need to have a country for your flag to become part of Unicode. Unicode has the transgender flag for instance. For Balinese maybe I would just use the flag of Bali.
dkdbejwi383 2y ago
> Is it the british flag? obviously the British flag is for the least controversial option, Ulster Scots.

troad 2y ago

> As a canadian, i know what EN means. However when sites use flags its a mystery. As an Australian, I somehow manage not to be entirely baffled by a US/UK flag icon in a language screen. > Maybe im supposed to pick the american flag, but eww feel like a traitor and i want the u's in my words. The purpose of a language selection screen is not to stroke your ego?

bawolff 2y ago
> As an Australian, I somehow manage not to be entirely baffled by a US/UK flag icon in a language screen. As an australian, when was the last time the Australian flag was the incorrect choice for you? I'm going to guess never.
- boredatoms 2y ago
  When is there ever an Australian flag to choose
scrollaway 2y ago
You’re saying this on HN, where plenty of people work on software affecting tens of millions of people. You wanna leave your phone number and explain your “well I ain’t offended” strategy to the next PM who’ll ask you about their users in Taiwan? The Russian speakers in Ukraine who saw their homes demolished by those who brandish the flag you’re not offended by? Maybe I should just invite you to my country of Belgium (four languages, not one of them being “the Belgian one”) for you to see what people here routinely think of those who can’t imagine the simple differences :)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- troad 2y ago
  I had initially posted a joke reply to this, but I'll post a serious one: I care a lot more about getting necessary services to elderly, semi-literate Russian-speaking babushkas fleeing Ukraine, by giving them an obvious indicator (on e.g. a name tag) that someone can speak to them, help them, then I care about your completely absurd, concocted 'well akshuallys'.
  - bawolff 2y ago
    Guess the Crimean Tatar speakers just get screwed?
    - troad 2y ago
      Yes, sadly, by Stalin and Putin, not by the choice of language symbols. Crimean Tartars, by the way, are a great example of a people that have their own flag, despite that flag not being the official flag of any independent nation-state. If someone is a speaker of Crimean Tartar, and working with Ukrainian refugees, they should add that flag to their name tag too.
  - scrollaway 2y ago
    I work in Brussels with a lot of Ukrainians — both fighters and refugees. I’ve made this a part of my day to day life since the full scale invasion. We until recently even shared an office with the Ukrainian Voices refugee committee, in fact. Seeing as you say you care about getting services to those people, let’s talk about putting your money where your keyboard is. Reach out via my profile and let me know how much you’d like to contribute.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Dylan16807 2y ago

esperent 2y ago

Just wait because all official EU sites now use the Irish flag to represent English, and it's getting more common in other websites made in Europe. As an Irish person I can't help feeling a frisson of satisfaction. But as a developer, this is just asking for confusion, especially since the Irish flag is already confusing enough. I mean, we could have a beautiful white harp on a green background representing Irish culture. The Welsh got a dragon... But no, it's a political statement from 120 years ago represented in three boring vertical stripes, just like everyone else's flag. It's identical (ok, mirrored) to the Ivory cost flag. It's the same three colors as the India flag, rotated 90 degrees, which itself is very similar to the Niger flag. And if you squint, or just don't know your flags well, it could easily be the Italian flag. It's a terrible choice to represent a language.

philwelch 2y ago
Shouldn’t the Irish flag represent Irish Gaelic though?
- esperent 2y ago
  English is an official language of Ireland, and by far the most wildly spoken. Gaeilge is also an official language but <4% of Irish people use it as their main language. However, this is another reason why flags aren't a good choice for languages. It works for some of the main languages - German, French, etc. where there's a clear one to one link between originating country's flag and language. It's less clear for English - the UK flag, the US flag, the Irish flag and apparently even the Canadian flag gets used. It's basically impossible to choose a flag for minority languages, and many countries have multiple official and widely spoken unofficial languages. What flag should represent Balinese, for example? I don't have a better solution, and if your site is translated to just a couple of languages it's fine. But I guess as machine translation gets closer to perfect and very cheap, it'll become more common to have lots of translations.
  - philwelch 2y ago
    If somebody said to me, “I speak American”, I would infer that they meant the American dialect of the English language. If they said “I speak Irish”, I would infer that they meant Irish Gaelic. Similarly, if I saw a Welsh flag on a language selection UI, I would assume that it represented the Welsh Brythonic language even though most Welsh people speak English. Unicode makes this hard (though it does provide the Welsh flag) but in principle you could solve this for some minority languages. For instance if you wanted to support Catalan, just use the flag of Catalonia, since they have one. You don’t need to have a country to have a flag, and you don’t need to have a country for your flag to become part of Unicode. Unicode has the transgender flag for instance. For Balinese maybe I would just use the flag of Bali.

dkdbejwi383 2y ago

> Is it the british flag? obviously the British flag is for the least controversial option, Ulster Scots.