I don’t like using country flags for languages. For one thing, not every language has a country of its own – there are 700+ languages in use today, but <200 countries. Many languages don’t even have any obvious insignia to represent them at all.
If you’re making a piece of software and you want it ported to many languages, just use text to represent the language.
Bonus points from TTS users.
Speak native american!!
The British, when they have to click the American flag for English, and then they see “color” without the “u”:
We save it for u wot M8?
Percentage wise, more percent of the population in England speaks English than in the US.
The unnecessary "u"s haunt us
Or in American …
The nnecessary ""s hant s.
I woke up screaming last night because I dreamed I went to grab my colored pencils and they said “colour” on the box. Almost as bad as that time I dreamed I had to take a driving tests and all the speed signs were in KM.
“hmm… this isn’t the right country but let’s roll the dice and see what happens”
When I was visiting Paris, a tour bus we got on had a audio guide, the languages were all labeled with national flags.
English -> UK flag French -> flag of France Spanish -> Flag of Spain Portuguese -> Flag of Brazil
Even in Europe Portugal plays second fiddle for it’s own language
Brazil became such a cultural powerhouse, almost anyone in the world would recognize its flag. So it makes sense. But it’s funny because only Portuguese speakers would need to recognize the flag on that tour.
Yes, but the guys who made the guide (I mean the developers who assigned each audio track a flag, not the ones recording the audio) might not. I guess that might not even been developed in France and nobody cared enough to fix the bug.
I wouldn’t call it a “bug”
Me neither, just lacking a better word.
I bet too that the audio itself is in Brazilian Portuguese
I wish there were some internationally recognized symbols to represent languages as distinct entities from their countries of origin, but the idea of trying to make some seems really unpopular for some reason.
There’s other languages that have far more politically contentious flags representing them - at least all the English-speaking countries are broadly allies. Spare a thought for the Taiwanese who have to select a People’s Republic of China flag, even though the language is as much theirs as it is the PRC’s, or the large number of Russian-speaking native Ukrainians who have to select the flag of the country who’s bombing them and their families.
The notion of a country owning a language is fraught with toxicity (indeed, Russia’s claim to vast swathes of Ukraine leans heavily on it), and if languages had their own flags we could sidestep the whole issue.
French has the fleur De lies which, although it was a symbol of French royalty is still used on the flag of Quebec and some places in Canada identify the French language option with the flag of Quebec.
Realistically, the best option would just be a shorted abbreviation of the language in that language. Ex. Eng for English and deu for German
There is a set of ISO codes for each language, but it’s not catchy used as an icon, and are also implicitly Western-centric by virtue of using the Latin alphabet.
I replaced the US flag with a UK one on my website for this reason x)
Brit here it’s our laugauge don’t like it? Get your own instead of spelling ours wrong
350 million Americans, 70 million British.
Your minority opinion is noted but outvoted, micronation.
Colony
I’m here for this English on regressed English violence.
Regressed English are the Welsh mate the colonys are known as the new indies
Canadian here. Choosing between UK English and US English feels like choosing between an abusive father and abusive husband.
We are a reformed crazy dad we are trying to be part of your life but we’re still drama
The US has more native English speakers than the next 3 countries combined. England is 5th on the list. By volume alone, our way is the correct one.
There’s several people that have commented this, and it doesn’t make any sense. It’s called English cause it was invented in England, a country which still exists. There’s also a few claims we changed our language, we didn’t (Posh people created Received Pronunciation. American exceptionalism at its finest.
I wouldn’t say invented 🤓
No, you’re right… developed would be better. Stole bits from everywhere would be even better.
English is a creole that got its own army.
I also like “bastard language”, or “melting pot” will do.
As an Aussie it really grinds my gears that office defaults to American spelling. And even after I change the dictionary to Australian or UK english it still continues to insert ‘z’ into words. It’s colonise, not colonize!
How do you pronounce that word
I thought in Aus and other international areas the Z was considered correct spelling, even though most of the rest follows British convention?
Traditional English vs Simplified English. I won’t tell you which is which.
Traditional English vs Yankee English.
Ah, one more way in which post-colonial America and Mao’s China are similar.
The way ‘herbs’ or ‘erbs’ (as some pronounce it) drives me absolutely nuts.
Also, ‘mirror’ where it sounds like ‘meer’ drives me nuts.
I definitely prefer British English. Love reading the old Agatha Christie books. E.g. “My word!” The colonel ejaculated, “I do believe that she’s dead!”
In the Black Panther they talk about the “heart-shaped 'erb,” and it sounds so strange to me, I always think it should then be “'art-shaped 'erb!”
Languages and nationalities are not a one-to-one match anyway. What would you expect from a Canadian flag? French, or English? The USA has NO official language, so that makes even less sense.
I wish people would stop trying to replace words with cute little images.
