We alsou have to start adding U’s in places that nourmally only have O’s.
Nou.
Why nout?
Because I said sou.
No visual alternatives to flags were given. (And that’s because there aren’t any. Flags will do just fine for 99,99% of the public)
I feel like this would be a good alternative:
English
中文
Español
العربية
Français
Русский
That will definitely work, but I personally think the flags are more instantly recognizable.
A tourist wanted since directions so he asked: "Sorry, do you speak American.’
My buddy who can be a purist: “I understand American but I speak English.”
Years ago I had someone ask me where the exit to the building is. The building occupies a complete city block in NYC and there are many exits. Using the wrong exit could add 15 minutes to your walk.
I asked him where he is was going. He got flustered, said “speak American”, and walked off.
On Oxford Street in London, a tourist asked me for directions to Edgware.
At first puzzled by his interest in visiting far-off social housing and knife crime, I quickly realized by his accent what he actually meant and directed him to nearby Edgware Road.
There’s no U in color. FIGHT ME!
Yes there is. And American English had it too before it was removed because the population needed it simplified.
phonetically it should really be “colur”, so I think “colour” is a decent compromise
‘kulla’, or ‘kullar’ for the Americans
interesting
What flavour of English do you and your colourful neighbours prefer ?
The spicy kind.
now we have to add Mexican and Indian to the english language O.O
There isn’t an I either.
There’s no I in denial
We did. Famously we lost and you got to go your own way and stop paying us taxes.
Percentage wise, more percent of the population in England speaks English than in the US.
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 think websites should use the English flag to mess with people
Use the flag of Scotland and watch the absolute madness in the online threads over everything from a single Wikipedia user, to Scottish English, Succession, Brexit, and so much more in just a few minutes.
Och! Ye kennae use thir flag withut chenging thae langgage to theis.
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
Haben Sie schonmal von germanischen Sprachen gehört, wo ein ‘S’ duraus so wie englisches ‘Z’ klingen kann?
I thought in Aus and other international areas the Z was considered correct spelling, even though most of the rest follows British convention?
Australia follows British conventions. However both spellings are correct and there has been a rise in ‘z’ over the past few years with American influence.
All government websites etc use British spelling.
Of course it’s worth adding that the Oxford English Dictionary argues (argued?) that the z is proper in British English! I disagree ;-)
What!
My world doth shaketh
Mine too. I had to stop believing in the OED as the foremost authority on correct English!
Besides, they probably put commas in the wrong places over there too.
Scottish people having to click on a British flag knowing it will display English (there is a perfectly good flag for England that people refuse to use 🏴)
I think the Scots having to click on an English flag to read something would piss them off more?
Or are you suggesting having a Scottish flag that displays the site in Gaelic for that 2% of Scots that know it?
I think you’re overthinking it slightly.
- French flag represents the language called “French”
- Spanish flag represents the language called “Spanish”
- Russian flag represents the language called “Russian”
- German flag represents the language called “German”
- Portuguese flag represents the language called “Portuguese”
- Japanese flag represents the language called “Japanese”
- Korean flag represents the language called “Korean”
- Chinese flag represents the language called “Chinese”
- Italian flag represents the language called “Italian”
- But somehow, the British flag doesn’t represent a language called “British”, but rather, one called “English”, despite there existing an English flag
See? This is why we shouldn’t use flags to represent languages.
Go to Brazil, and I bet they use the Brazilian flag to represent the language they speak, not the Portuguese one.
Go to Ireland, and you’ll see they use the Irish flag to represent the English language.
In Switzerland, what flag should they use to represent Ladin?
And what about Canada? They speak two official languages.
The correct way to display languages is just their name or they ISO code. Using flags for languages is fundamentally wrong.
I feel like I’ve seen the Quebec territory flag used for “FR (Can)” which I found amusing as a US hick
there is a perfectly good flag for England that people refuse to use
Well yeah, but these days, you say you’re English, you’ll get arrested and thrown in jail 😆
Ami: isn’t that the red cross flag?
The whole concept of multilingual websites is foreign to Americans. There is only one language in their mind.
As soon as Trump was inaugurated, the Whitehouse website removed the spainish language feature
That’s for another reason we clearly know
What’s language?
yes
As opposed to everyone else when they have to click the US flag to get English language options
There is no U in “Boston Tea Party” either.
Bouston Teua Puarty
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)
As an American who does web development, “You guys have multiple languages on your websites?”
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.
One of these days Trump is gonna sue the UK for speaking the American language
“By presidential decree, it will no longer be called ‘American English’ and ‘British English’, it will be ‘American American’ and ‘English American’.”
The Gulf of Obliviousness
Oblivious, Remastered
