Flags Are Terrible At Representing Languages
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- Опубліковано 3 бер 2022
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SOURCES & FURTHER READING
www.flagsarenotlanguages.com/b...
blog.weglot.com/flags-to-repr...
localizejs.com/articles/why-u...
www.britannica.com/list/flags...
www.statista.com/statistics/9...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geograp...
www.verbling.com/articles/pos...
forum.duolingo.com/comment/25...
Which flag do you think should represent which language?
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Ignorance and Apathy
IE: I don't know and I don't care.
The Cross of St George should represent English.
It really depends. Although I can't speak for websites and games, I can do that for comparing words in other languages. If you were comparing English to other Germanic languages, like Scots, Frisian*, Dutch, German, Nordic languages etc., you either want to use the flag of England or the Union Jack, since there weren't any early Europeans living in what is now the United States a couple hundred years ago. If you wanted to look at a Native American language with some words borrowed from English and compare them side-by-side, use the flag of the USA, as it would be pretty weird to use the Union Jack, especially if those words were borrowed because of Manifest Destiny, rather than British imperialism.
*Frisian actually refers to several related languages, not just one
It depends on what variations of the language you choose.
If we talk about standard french, the french one. But if we talk about french Canadian, the Canadian one, and so on... Because there are differences in the language from country to country
If you want standard English, we're gonna use the UK one, one time I saw a UK flag mashed with the Indian one and was about the English spoken in India
@@Ggdivhjkjl or at least the union jack
I remember being on an EU site after brexit, where the english language was represented by the Irish flag.
Honestly, I find that sad given that Gaeilge (Irish) is going extinct in its native land.
@@slyninja4444 but it is also hillarious that the english language is represented my a country as small as ireland. It's like using Liechtenstein for german. Hillarious
okay that’s fair tho
Lolz
Could be worse, right, Malta?
Quick thing I want to point out: European and Brazilian Portuguese are pretty different, and Duolingo uses Brazil's flag because they teach the Brazilian dialect.
Apparently I made a bunch of people mad for stating an opinion
@@themauveink But in that cases it makes sense, since the Brazilian and European Portuguese have some diferent words, and they normally prefer to use the brazilian dialect.
@@mostardo4175 Indeed, but It'd be kinder to specify better, to make a clear distance and visualization between the two.
@@themauveink Brazilian Portuguese is the "standard" nowadays because it has more native speakers than the European one, and, not just that, but, is easier to a Portugal native understand Brazilian Portuguese, than a Brazilian native understand the European Portuguese
Duolingo uses Brazilian voices and vocabulary, but sometimes uses some phrase structures that are more common in Portugal. After all, it's the same language. I would love to see Duolingo implementing an Angolan, Mozambican or Portuguese voice to one of the characters.
Name explain - 'People aren't really learning their own native languages on duolingo'
Sweden - 'My goals are beyond your understanding'
Refugees.
@@cakeisyummy5755 then why isn't in Germany German the most learned in duolingo?
@@wafabilalkhawatmi2605 because germany, while still having a shitload of immigrants, still has way less of them per capita
@@wafabilalkhawatmi2605because more natives use Duolingo to learn other languages in Germany than in Sweden maybe
@@cakeisyummy5755 Exactly 🎯.
12:05 "flags are not languages"
Sailors who use flags in communication " years of academic training wasted "
Flags of nations are not languages, but those of maritime communication like those you mentioned are. I got the point
yeah dialects
I have occasionally seen websites that offer (for example) American English and British English as separate options. For those, the US and UK flags are (IMO) suitable.
As a non native speaker, I often wonder how big of a difference those different flavors (flavours) of English really make. Like both Windows and IOS have separate keyboard layout for every English speaking country yet they make absolutely no difference when used. Aside from the spelling of certain words, is there really anything that justifies adding so many types of English?
@@aquilazyy1125 Certainly. The wholely complex issues of representation and familiarity. If you are making a text-heavy game, adding more languages is a huge task but is vital for players to scan the text faster. But adding, say, Canadian English to the game if you are, say, Canadian, makes sense on a different level. If you don't have much language in your game, like in Minecraft, then getting every country, ethnicity, fandom, constructed tongue, and rot13 into the game is a whole 'nother level.
Yes, but words an spellings will be different and more people speak American English in the world not just in in America. (E) Colour. (A) Color.
AKA English (Traditional) and English (Simplified)
Same for Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal).
Fun fact: there is an ongoing fight over what the flag of Yiddish should be, since there has never been a predominantly-Yiddish-speaking country or province. And also because Yiddish scholars are constantly searching for reasons to fight each other.
There is an ashkenasi flag (white background, 2 black stripes and a black menorha in the middle).
@@Tata-ps4gy That's one proposed Yiddish flag, not the Ashkenazi flag, but people don't like it because it looks too much like the Israeli flag, and also gives a false impression of Yiddish being a country.
Oy vay! Why not that logo of Mel Brooks in a headdress from Blazing Saddles.
Cool!
maybe like half german flag half israeli flag (from what i know about yiddish)
I once saw an image of a website where the italian language was represented by the flag of San Marino and that will stay one of my most favorite images of all time
Did it happen to be a website based in San Marino? Because, Colombian websites meant for an international audience often use the Colombian flag when indicating Spanish.
San Marino is Based.
I want that image
I'm a Brazilian and I would never click on a Portugal flag assuming I would find Brazilian Portuguese there. I know it will be a language I can kinda read, but I also know it would be just different enough for me to be constantly focusing on what's different (almost like an uncanny valley thing) and not pay attention to what I should. I'd rather just read it in English, or even Spanish.
As for a solution, I'm a big fan of language+country codes. EN-US, EN-UK, EN-AU, PT-BR, PT-MZ, PT-PT/PT-EU, ES-MX, ES-AR, ES-ES/ES-EU… Or, if they really didn't give this matter any thought, just plain EN, PT, ES. Then you already know what you're getting.
this isnt the case for us hispanics, there are different slang between spain and most latin spanish but we can read it and understand each other without any problem besides the local slang
For me written PT-Portuguese is almost identical to BR-Portuguese, except for a few words that have different meanings. But speaking Portuguese-PT is difficult to understand. Sometimes it's easier to understand Galician than PT-Portuguese. At least for me.
@@LeonardoMenezes03 the words may be almost identical, but their use is not, and that's what distracts me. And I'm not even talking about stuff like "telemóvel/celular". Every time I see something like "ele está a fazer" (PT-EU) instead of "ele está fazendo" (PT-BR), the uncanny valley feeling I mentioned before kicks in.
@@prestok Eu sou português e nunca clicaria numa bandeira brasileira para selecionar a língua do país onde originou e também onde nasci.
Eu acho que estás a exagerar em relação a não compreender, o brasileiro parece-me ser isolacionista - se abrires os olhos verás que o português falado em ambos os países são idênticos, usamos ambos "ele está fazendo" e "ele está a fazer", ambas formas estão corretas e presentes na língua portuguesa mundialmente.
The flags used to represent each language probably goes deeper than just the languages themselves, but the dialects within those languages. If the American flag is used, there is a chance that American English would be spoken, shown, or taught. The Portuguese flags are a perfect example of this, since the Portuguese in Portugal proper and Brazil are different.
Really important for Spanish-speaking countries for sure
@@KaliBeatsYoSoyAquel
Mexico: Latino Spanish
Spain: Mainland Spanish
@@therealmistermemer what about the rest of latin america
@@therealmistermemer but other Latin american countries have other dialects?
@@pennyforyourthots We all understand each other, it's not too different.
As a web dev, I have three arguments FOR flags.
1) Standard accessibility. Imagine a whole site in, say, Mandarin, with chinese characters everywhere. In fields, in pictures, in boxes, on buttons. No flag. How are you supposed to know this site is actually plurilingual and one of these boxes is actually a language switch ? Pictographs aim to be universal.
2) Inclusive accessibility. Not everyone on the internet can read at all. I'll take a very real example : the French social security website ; social security is basically universal healthcare (it's actually included). There are icons everywhere for navigation. On each page, you have an audiodescription plugin that reads everything you click on out loud. In French. Unless you click on the flag, change the language, and get the same audio help in your language associated with visual hints… like these flags.
3) Design : a logo takes less area than text. And even moreso that a logo can be smaller and still recognizable. Logo, icon, pictograph, monogram, whatever… everything narrower than plain text is better than plain text. Especially on mobile interfaces, and even smaller screens like smartwatches.
I will not deny that never seeing my flag to represent Spanish growing up gave me some negative feelings, I have always felt that making things easier for those that can do less, or just happen to know less, is more important than the feelings of those who don't need the help. Indeed, before learning English, the easiest way to find the language selection section was to click around until I found one with flags.
Once my brother switched the language in my game to Korean and I had no idea how to switch back… can definitely relate
@@talkysassis but that symbol is technically only inclusive of Latine based and Chinese languages. How about Cyrillic, Hindi… alphabets ? The whole point with flags is that they are universal. And usually everyone knows what an American flag is and understand that it stands for English. And those that don’t know the flag probably just don’t speak English so they have no use for clicking it. And it stands for every other flags.
@@vizender Everyone knows that symbol because they use google translate. It just need to be something everyone knows what it is.
Like the send button on youtube comments.
Language switchers are almost always at the top of a page with a universal language icon. You're assuming everyone knows flags and you're providing a bad user experience to folks whose national identity isn't of the flag despite the language.
You can also include the 2 or 3 char ISO country codes instead of flags. If you need something a many folks have seen and understand.
When I look for language options in video games I prefer to see my native language to be shown as "한국어" Rather than "Korean" in the list of languages, because it is much faster to beeline to the bottom of the list and find it somewhere around 日本語 简体中文 and 繁體中文 compared to finding K from a list of roman alphabet names.
"Korea is one", so a Northern or Southern flag is to be avoided. In reality we already have two Korean languages. One written entirely with Korean letters, mixed just with Chinese loanwords and spoken with a different accent and the other Korean with in hangeul mixed with Chinese characters, lots of English loanwords (like "ho-seu-teu" = host) and a different accent. Korean reunification will come sometime, but how?
If we are strict about Korean, it can also be 조선말 as recognized as the official language of North Korea and as a regional language in some prefectures of China.
@@ruedigernassauerthey're the same language. The difference between the Pyongyang and Seoul dialects is much lesser than that between South Korean provinces.
It certainly is stupid when you go and select language and the languages are written in English or something. Steam, Discord, Twitter writes it in both languages, which is still silly because if someone doesn't know what "한국어" means, then it's not for them. Telling them it's Korean is almost worthless.
are you from north or south korea?
Being understood is more important than being accurate.
Wdym?
Nevermind i understand now
Wdym?
@@BinaryBoliasUnderstand that there should just be a flag that is the most obvious choice to represent a language rather than trying to be accurate for every single territory that may also speak that language. Anyone understands what language the Spanish flag or Union Jack represent, so there is no need to dive into such nuance when all you need is just a small symbol for the language option. I swear sometimes people make a huge deal out of minute stuff like this and honestly 🤓 is a good representation for this.
Nevermind i understand now
Unless the flag used is blatantly wrong, I really wouldn't take notice or even care. And I'd rather see flags then not, 'cause honestly, I just think it looks neat.
Me too! I've see on-line the use of the Irish flag for the English language, apparently as a response to Brexit by some companies. Canadian flags are also used for French or even ⚜ instead of a flag.
Yeah I never cared if people use the Union Jack or US flag for English. Not like it does much by give a country who speaks it to show.
@@razier5299
The flag feels more like something that others would use to easily tell languages apart and not meant for native speakers of said language.
I agree, im from Uruguay and i prefer to see an spanish flag than just having to search a word in a list, it is easier to find and looks better too.
@@penisesman4267
What about Mexican flags?
I just assumed the flag represented which version of the language is being used. Each country varies in grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. American English is different from UK English. Spanish is different throughout South and Central America, Mexico, and Spain… The flags help clarify which system is being used. I know I’ve been confused many times before realizing I was reading something from another English dialect
Also, only using the languages’ names ignores the issue of limited space. Writing them out works in some context, but many times, it’s too cluttered or just not enough characters
I understand why it’s frustrating for some and wouldn’t say using flags is perfect. Ultimately it comes down to power; that’s what people are really upset about. Focusing on this detail doesn’t actually address those issues. In a world with limited resources, this just isn’t the battle I’d want to fight today
I'm almost sure I've once clicked on the portuguese flag only to be met with brazillian portuguese. So... Yeah.
@@FabioZpt I’m almost sure there are exceptions to “rules”, especially those that are stated to just be assumed. So… Yeah.
@@allyson87 Yeah... I guess
@@allyson87
While there are dialectical differences in Spanish (just like any other language), we are taught all of them in language arts class so it isn't that big of a deal for us; spelling also isn't a problem as we all spell the same, unlike English or Portuguese.
Dubs are where one can find the biggest contrast as Spain gets its own dub, while Hispanic America gets one based on Mexican broadcast Spanish, people have their preference, but I don't care! Although, in video games the usual dub is the one from Spain even in the Americas, if they decide to have V.O. in Spanish at all (that's another problem altogether), which can bother a vocal minority that feels video games should be treated the same as movies and TV, meaning it should also come with a Hispanic-American dub (which happens sometimes; rarely it is the only one which is the case of “Far Cry 6”), as they are also often the same people that dislike the Spaniard dud.
I feel ambivalent about it, but I would prefer video game publishers to have comprehensive language menus in their games, similar to how they are getting better with accessibility features, rather than following the language the console is set to or having a simple menu similar to the one shown on the video!
Basically something like this:
*Text - 🇺🇲|🇬🇧 English • 🇨🇦|🇫🇷 Français • 🇲🇽|🇪🇸 Español • 🇦🇶&c.*
*Voice over (if any) - 🇺🇲|🇬🇧 English • 🇨🇦|🇫🇷 Français • 🇲🇽|🇪🇸 Español • 🇦🇶&c.*
*→Subtitles (if it has V.O.) - 🇺🇲|🇬🇧 English • 🇨🇦|🇫🇷 Français • 🇲🇽|🇪🇸 Español • 🇦🇶&c.*
Instead of:
*Language - 🇺🇲|🇬🇧 English • 🇨🇦|🇫🇷 Français • 🇲🇽|🇪🇸 Español • 🇦🇶&c.*
Many games don't have language menus even while offering different languages, which is annoying, because it should be part of the many ways one can adjust one's gaming experience.
Movies and TV are pretty much equal in terms of dubs offered, so each side of the Atlantic is covered. I would prefer one dub across all Spanish-speaking countries as we all speak the same language.
@@sion8 I don't know what language arts class is, I wasn't given that class in school, I had a normal culture class where we would just talk about ortography and read some books, not multicultural deferences, many language differences with other hispanic countries I have learned through youtube, traveling and my career of modern languages, when it comes to dubbing, I guess is just Spanish pride, of having their own dubbing industry.
As a brazilian I see the usage of flags as something good because portuguese in Brazil and Portugal are really different not only with the wild accent difference but with many words, to the point that some common words in Portugal are considered swearing in Brazil. The flag signals which one you are refering to more clearly.
I think that this only works With Brazil and Portugal because the language is really different from one country to another, but some languages that exist in more than one country are almost the same in both countries, so representing these languages would be really difficult.
Tradução:
Eu acho que isso só funciona com Brasil e Portugal pq a lingua realmente é bem diferente de um pais para o otro, mas tem linguas que existem em mais de um pais que são quase iguais nos dois paises, ent fazer a representação dessas linguas seria dificil.
@@Ivy-Tellers if they are refering to 2 sufficiently different languages the flag usage is best, but if they are doing, for example, only one english translation, then it's more suitable to not use flags. My guess is having both, if possible, is the best option.
It’s still one language. And it’s Portuguese.
@@FreshVito_bg it's wildly different
@@FreshVito_bg it may be one language but it _is_ very different between the two countries, ofc if you learn one version of the language it will be easier to learn the other one but knowing one version doesn't mean that you know the other one.
I like when the language selection says the name of the language, followed by the location in parenteses, with no flags:
Portuguese (Brazil)
Portuguese (Portugal)
English (United States)
English (United Kingdom)
That way you can have many languages per country, and many countries per language without making things too confusing. There are still some edge cases where there is some very different dialects of the same language in the same country, but this seems like a pretty simple solution that works for most cases.
Concordo contigo
This is how it always should be no confusion and no offending nobody
That's a bad idea, as there are people who can't read the script. Some kind of visual icon is far better, but there are cases where the flag is simply not appropriate, eg. Arabic - Saudi Arabia now is only a minority, and has a heavily politicised flag. Take the Arab League flag; or take the Pan-Arabic flag (red-white-black without any symbols denoting the concrete country it represents if the colours are used in a national flag).
For English, the UK/USA flag above/below a diagonal stripe may be "ugly", but it's simply the most commonly used symbol.
It shouldn’t say Portuguese though, because it should allways refer to a language in that language.
@@enysuntra1347 It is meant for when you can read; if you can't read, the selection isn't going to do you any good. But the selection should say:
português (Brasil)
português (Portugal)
This also includes other scripts:
العربية (مصر)
العربية (السعودية)
Wikipedia has been doing this the right way for a while, just denote a language by the native name. Anyone speaking the language will be able to search for it and recognize it without issue.
That would work for Wikipedia case, where users would most likely search articles in their own language. Not so effective for Duolingo or such.
@@risannd Seems a bit of a strange objection. How often would you need to find a language you don't yet know the native name of? Even then, languages do have names in other languages than their own. If the primary purpose is such, denoting the language by an exonym would be fine.
@@Quintinohthree To give an example from my own life, if I'm on Wikipedia and there's an article on a topic from outside the English-speaking world, I'll sometimes go to its equivalent article in one of the relevant languages for extra information, especially if I find the English language article lacks detail or clarity. Since I only speak 2 languages fluently, that almost always means the relevant language is one that I have little or no familiarity with.
Now, I have enough superficial knowledge of the world around me that this is usually not a problem. I don't speak Albanian, but I know their word for "Albanian." I don't speak Russian, but I can read Cyrillic. I don't speak Georgian and I can't read the alphabet, but I know what it looks like. But these are all examples of situations where other people could stumble.
For myself, I have trouble with situations where a script I don't know is used in several languages (Arabic, for instance) or where several scripts I don't know look very similar (Khmer and Thai, for instance). In those situations I have to rely on the 2- or 3-letter language code in the link - if I actually know it.
@@Stamboul In that case you're already on wikipedia and you can look up the language's native name there as it is.
@@Quintinohthree Sure, but it's an extra step I have to take. It makes this aspect of the site less user-friendly.
Esperanto has its own flag. And I think it would be cool if other languages had their own flags too. But this would raise a lot of political debates. What even is a language, and what's just a dialect?
I’d split them up into language, dialect, and something extra for the thing that Scots is.
A language is a dialect with an army and a navy, they say.
I remember an online flag group once had a brainstorm about a flag for English language. I should dig up my minimalist contribution.
@@Periwinkleaccount Scots is techinically a dialect of English, but you’re right that it’s kinda weird and deserves its own category.
@@brokenursa9986 I'd like to call it a distinct language, mainly because it diverged a lot. But another major reason is because I want a language that's mutually intelligible with English LOL.
I have to disagree. Even tho some languages get misrepresented when using flags, the flag itself says a lot more than just the language.
If it's dubbed, then there's the obvious matter of accents, that sometimes can make a huge difference. Mexicans, Argentinians, Venezuelans and Spanish people talk very distinctively from each other, they have their own dubbing studios when It comes to movies and games because these differences matter a lot.
I can't even imagine playing a game or watching a movie in portuguese from Portugal as a Brazilian. It would ruin any serious experience and I'd be laughing at their accent and weird slangs for the whole thing.
Maybe the differences between English, American English and Australian english are not that great, but if the accents, wording and slangs are all Australian, then what's the problem having the Australian flag representing the English language, showing you just that?
This whole video is just "I am a brit pissed off that Americans stole our language".
Likewise, as a Portuguese, I can't stand playing a video game in Brazilian Portuguese. If there is no European Portuguese option, I will go for English instead of PT-BR. I have nothing against it, it's just the vocabulary and some of the phrase structure used that is jarring, more so than any difference between British and American English.
It's a shame how videogame companies seem to only go for Brazilian Portuguese nowadays. The Sims 2 had both European and Brazilian Portuguese translations but fast forward 10 years into The Sims 4 and there's only PT-BR, for example. Even worse when they don't specify which version and just call it Portuguese.
Yes. I know on Duolingo, for the most part, they teach American English, not British English. Which makes sense because there are a lot more Americans (and Canadians if you count that too, because are accents are pretty much the same) then there are British people. Though, as you said, there’s not as much of a difference between British and American English, as there is Brazilian Portuguese and Portugal Portuguese. It’s mainly just a difference between word spellings. For example they’ll teach you color is spelt like, “color,” and not the British way of, “colour.”
Funny?
@@basketman2517 it's pretty much the same there's words that are different but mean the same thing and some that mean something on one and other on another
Ikr
Game developer here: I use that method because it's simple and easy to understand for the players.
The downsides don't reach the level of the benefits, so this method is likely to stick around.
Please use the appropriate flag for the appropriate version you are actually using, like an American flag if you are using American spelling and such, while if you're using the kind of words and spelling that is taught in England then use the union jack (even though it isn't England's flag).
I find this whole issue just nitpicking. Just like artificially changing the languages themselves, the flags chosen are understandable enough by themselves and changing them now would in fact bring about a lot of confusion and, most likely, even more new issues.
@@mikitz Yep, exactly. People really don't know how complicated games are to make, and that their small pet peeves are just that.
@@Call-me-Al The dialects are different enough for it to cause confusion though so what’s the point?
@@iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii7738 that is the point: to avoid confusion.
Disagree. To a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, European Portuguese can be quite hard to understand. Representing the language with a flag makes it clear which accent will be used so the user knows what to expect. If you learn "Portuguese" without any knowledge of which version, it can be quite bizarre to travel abroad. As I said, you can be fluent in the European version and have a real hard time communicating in Brazil. ESPECIALLY, because MANY European Portuguese words are considered cussing in Brazil. Call a child a Puto and you WILL be in trouble! Also, as a Brazilian I must say that the 12:55 scenario NEVER happens these days!
Reason #3: which accent is gonna be used
9:06 so did you like watch the video at all or not?
As a Brazilian, I have to disagree with some things that you said. Yes there are certain accents in Portugal that make it hard for us Brazilians to understand what they say, but that wouldn't make any difference on a website since most of its content will be in the form of text so even though some words and gramatical structures are slightly different, a Brazilian would understand 100%. A foreign person who learned European Portuguese and traveled to Brazil would take some time to get used to our accent but if we speak slowly they will understand perfectly (which would be no different than the problem that a person who learned Metropolitan French would have to face in Quebec for example)
"Portuguese" language originated from Portugal 🇵🇹 and not from Brazil 🇧🇷
Just because you speak it doesn't make it yours
Besides it was the "Portuguese" people who brought their language into your country
Not the other way around mate
@@KarmaKraftttt I apologize in advance if what I understood is not what you meant, but if you wanted to state that the Portuguese(people) own the Portuguese language, I must say that it is most definitely not ours and not theirs, Portuguese is the official language in 10 countries, weather we like or not, it's everyone's, nobody can claim a language that's being spoken in several continents with several variations and several accents, just not how it works. Claiming to own a language is not just rude to everyone else, but also an opinion full of disinformation and arrogance. So once again, I apologize if that's not what you meant, but if it was, then well.....
I suggest that we could probably use the ISO codes of the languages, such as DE for German, EN for English, ES for Spanish, PT for Portuguese, ID for Indonesian, etc.
I've seen them used it isn't rare, just not the norm.
Then please use the 3-letter ISO code, and not the 2-letter one.
@@gwaptiva
What's wrong with 2?
@@sion8 not enough combinations to cover all languages
@@gwaptiva I sometimes see the 2-letter ISO codes on snacks and household equipments (such as oven or refrigerator). The instruction manuals for the oven and TV in my house were written in several languages, using the ISO codes to indicate the languages being used. As for the 3-letter ISO codes, I only ever see them in Wikipedia.
I went to a "language mixer" party at a bar here in Beijing last week where you walk in, you pay, they ask you where you're from and which languages you speak, then proceed to give you stickers of flags to represent the countries of the languages. They gave an American flag, a Spanish flag, a Chinese (PRC) flag.
Having the Spanish flag also felt really weird because, although I speak Spanish fluently, I'm not Hispanic. I just took Spanish classes from middle school through to the end of high school and grew up in Miami. If you know anything about Miami, you'll know that most people are of a Spanish-speaking culture. You'll also know that most of them are not from Spain. All I could think about were the Spanish pronunciation of z/ci/ce and the use of vosotros and I said to myself "This really doesn't feel appropriate". lol But before I could think of another flag to put, it dawned me: I grew up in a Puerto Rican/Dominican neighborhood, was taught Spanish by a Mexican and a Cuban over the course of seven years, and I had very close Colombian friends for a long period in my life. There wasn't a flag that could represent "my" Spanish!
I didn't think anything of having the American flag until looking around and seeing that everyone else had the British flag to indicate that they speak English. This is was interesting to me because of all the reasons mentioned in the video, but also because most mainland Chinese speakers of English (in my experience) have an accent that more approximates a North American accent than a British one. In fact, many of my Chinese colleagues have told me that they find British English both harder to speak and understand.
There is an ongoing meme in Brazil, that almost always (excluding european websites), portuguese is represented with our flag, and your example of my language is pretty accurate, brazilian portuguese and portuguese portuguese are wildy different, in vocabulary and in accent, Brazil itself already have a monstruos diversity of accents, but with Portugal things are vastly different, even verb conjugation. With that said, as a non-native english speaker, I don't see too much of a difference between them while they are written, just some words, but portuguese, in some cases, having distinct versions is needed, not essencial, we can understand, but just have to make a little more effort
And Portuguese also has an enormous amount of accents too. People from other parts of the country sometimes have serious trouble in AI... ahahahah
As a native English speaker having learned a good amount of Portuguese, the difference between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese is a lot bigger than American English and England English
nothing breaks my immersion more than playing a video game, selecting the union jack as the only english option, and then my objectives include heading to the red colored elevator
I'm in the US, but even I know UK English it should be the red coloured lift
People in the U.K. use both terms pretty interchangeably. Most signs will be marked as ‘lift’ but in casual conversation people will normally just switch between words.
Oh, that's funny!
@@Druchii is that in the north? because i’ve never heard anyone use ‘elevator’ in the mids or south
The flag used should definitely match the translation. ie the stars and stripes for elevators and trunks and the union jack for lifts and boots. Not to mention slang words.
Im am curious if the internet is resulting a blending of dialects, atleast for people using mediums like youtube with voice, because as an American who has never crossed the pond i think "bloody" alot and I've read stories about kids in the UK thinking "what are you, British" in response to their parents only to realize a second or too later they yes they infact are British and shouldn't have this American meme stuck in their heads. Or stories about pepa pig giving kids British accents and i assume sesame street doing the reverse.
Not only that, I select English and _Europe_ on a Nintendo console, playing an official Nintendo game, and it gives me units in inches. I'm European, I use metric.
It really irritates me when I have to click on a foreign flag to select the language that originated in the place where I've lived my entire life. It's even worse when spell checkers will only accept spellings from a foreign dialect as correct (and have no option to choose a different dialect). I then spend ages trying to decide if I'm wrong or if the spell checker just doesn't recognise it.
Portugal knows the struggle
Wow what a huge problem
@@brunadb23 Oh shut up
@@brunadb23 I have the gold and I wont return it
@@brunobaia7898 This isn't Reddit???
This is so petty of a complaint. This is one of those things where it organically evolved because it just did. It's not some intentional slight.
you're either american, german or french am i right?
@@123juna Yep and frankly I could care less if "English" was represented by the Union Jack or a Canadian Maple leaf instead of the American flag; come to think of it, I think it used to be common to do that since it was easier to make out the UK flag than the US one at lower resolutions.
You wouldn't be saying that if you were from a country whose language is NEVER represented with their flag not even in your own country
@@123juna No, I literally don't care because I'm not wildly insecure.
@@bryanl1984 you don't know if you don't care so it's easy to say that
I remember being angry/confused about this as a kid playing those old Harry Potter games. Like Harry Potter is famously British why on earth would you use the Stars and Stripes!
Warner Bros. Is an American studio so that probably has something to do with it.
Actually I don't think it's about where from or most widely spoken it's about what version or dialect of the language is being used in, for example the game.
In that instance I'm sure the spelling and even the words in the game are probably American rather than British English
Same with websites, but a little different reasoning. I often struggle to know what to click on as often times if I click a USA flag, it takes me to a version of the site that doesn't ship outside the country, and it's hard to know what to do. That's part of why I want to be a UI/UX tester, to find those problems and try to solve them.
I'm in the "not worried about it" camp.
The question to me is, do you know which language to select?/Is it clear in context which language is which?
I don't care if they use the British flag or the USA flag to signify English, I will understand either way, and I have way bigger priorities to be concerned with.
And I respect that.
In Portugal they hate that the Brazilian flag is used for portuguese. They say that it is wrong only their portuguese is the correct one, and the Brazilian portuguese is just a dialect (even if Brazil have 20x more people than Portugal)
When using flags like this, it isn't an issue of accuracy. Its used as an iconic image to convey information quickly. As a kid in America, seeing the union jack to represent english never bothered me. Regardless of whether they use the union hack or American flag, I know it means english. Issues only arise when a large quantity of people don't recognize a flag. Foe example, I don't speak Spanish, and I don't know the flags of any Spanish speaking countries other than Mexico. But that might be different for Spanish speakers. Another example, I am learning Japanese on duolingo. Instead of scrolling down a list of every language, reading the name of each one, I quickly scrolled until I saw the Japanese flag. If there were no flags, and it just said "Japanese" or "nihongo" or "日本語", I would have been there a while reading the names of languages I don't want to learn. Also, in the case of languages that have their own alphabets, like Japanese, I wouldn't have recognized "日本語" because I didn't know any Japanese yet. The flags are there to quickly convey information. Not necessarily to be accurate. If duolingo ONLY had the flags, that would be an issue.
TLDR, I think using the flags is good to convey information quickly, but in the cases where the flags are used, it should also include the name of the language.
The union jack should always be used to convey that the English used is "the queen's English", and not American English or Australian English (fun fact, Australians call bell peppers "capsicum" which is the latin name for the plant family.)
@@Call-me-Al even Indians call ut capsicum
@@duckpotat9818 that's because it's the Latin name :)
@The Floppa show - SUBSCRIBE! People in the UK use a lot of different varieties of English. Many other languages are way more uniform, despite being spread over vastly bigger territory.
In the international context, however, the Union Jack is likely to represent the standard British English or the RP, like the one BBC speaks, and educated British people speak. As a non-native speaker, when offered different types of English, I would likely opt for this one, because it has very defined sounds, therefore being easily comprehensible. It's crucial when you're listening something e.g. a lecture so as to get information, not just to try to improve your understanding of different kinds of English. For understanding some disciplines that don't have decent vocabulary in my native language historically, e.g. economics, West European medieval history, IT, RP English may be even better than my own native language. It's not always that good with AmE as the difference between sounds is more nimble, so it's often difficult to understand a new therm or one you've only seen in the books.
It's also the reason to learn is as a person whose native sound system is completely different then English, so with a dialect with clear sounds you start sound understandable even to a person who is also an English learner from a language group different than yours, so your English starts to be useful.
For the case of teaching languages it makes sense to use flags yes, but you are never going to choose a language you don’t know in rayman 2 for example, because then you won’t understand the game.
as a brasilian I can say that PT/BR and PT/PT are different enough to deserve different translations and the majority of the portuguese speakers are brasilians so usually the translation is in brasilian portuguese but some games/medias have both PT/PT and PT/BR translations so it makes sense to use the flag because they are representing which country's portuguese it's translated to.
well it's just the portuguese case, don't know about the other languages.
A lot of games and programs will allow you to differentiate between British English and American English. They aren't actually very different at all though! A British speaker will be totally fine speaking to an American, and vice versa.
Sem querer te ofender mas brasileiro em inglês é brazilian e não brasilian
In my experience, flags generally represent dialect, not just language. French is typically native french, English is generally American english, etc. Its not uncommon (in the US at least) to have British english as a separate language selection.
That then brings up the whole debate of "which dialect of the language should you teach" though, which is its own can of worms.
But that isn't even always true. Duolingo uses the Spain flag, but teaches American Spanish, for example
@@KarmaKraftttt teaches anything american=biased
@@KarmaKraftttt The comment below yours shows how stupid your logic is.
@@MarioFRC32 that's why i said generally, there certainly are exceptions, though duolingo seems particularly unstandardized imo
just teach british english as thats real english, other languages can just fight thats fine
I always thought the flags were used to indicate what TYPE of English/Spanish/Portuguese was used.
•US English differs from the UK & all other English-speaking nations in spelling & words for objects (for example, “center color” vs “centre colour” & “diaper” instead of “nappy”).
• Latin American Spanish & Spaniard Spanish have different words for objects & even pronouns Spain’s “vosotros” vs Latin America’s “ustedes” for “you all”’(plural you) & “conducir” vs “manejar” for the word “to drive”
•Brazilian Portuguese & that of Portugal where the common informal “you” is “você” in Brazil
& “tu” in Portugal, while the word for “train” is “trem” in Brazil & “comboio” in Portugal.
Btw "vosotros" is also used for Spanish religious texts & is still mentioned in Spanish textbooks
Brazil we say "você" but also "tu". Not so different
@@gabrielj6609 I’m not saying it isn’t said at all, but I thought that only Brazilians in the north (maybe northeast) were the only ones who use “tu” commonly.
@@Dhi_Bee "tu" is more informally used, but all parts of Brazil uses it
@@Dhi_Bee like I'm from one of the South Brazilian states, we use here, mostly when we speak fast... Where are you from?
The selection of the flag is based not only on the name of the country or the number of speakers, but also on the dialect seen in that particular media (or at least should). This isn't as easy to notice in English as the differences between the British and American variants are not really that common, but in languages like Spanish or Portuguese, the difference is quite more obvious. The problem is not on using flags, but on some media not following this third logical rule.
(1:00) What is weirder is that the release of North American games before PS3 didn't really allow you to choose any other language than English. The European version was usually the only version with multiple languages. Therefore this menu is likely exclusive to the European release. Most other games in my experience uses the UK flag, since it's usually only the European version that has this option.
i agree with you assessment, but i would still urge to keep flags, preferably in a "we agree which country's flag to use for a given language" mode (plus including certain non-country flags)
the reason is accessability: there are people who are not able to read or write (for various reasons) as well as people with impaired vision. those people benefit from having broader visual cues, maybe not enough to make them pick the right language right away, but at least to limit their search. while the situations where this applies aren't many, taking away those cues takes away a massive aid without switching it out for something else. meanwhile the personal feelings of unease someone from the UK feels when they have to select a US flag, as much as feel the same and a valid as that feeling is, doesn't cause significantly more trouble to get to their preferred language (plus you still have to deal with American accents in speech); and the more serious political problems, particularly involving Mandarin in Taiwan, and while we're at it, the linguicide of other Chinese languages, will simply not be even slightly mitigated by dropping flags (note that Mandarin is more often than not just listed as Chinese, as in, the language of China)
Isn't the reason for that last part that there's effectively a unified Chinese written language, besides the fact that there are both traditional and simplified characters?
They can learn how to read that one word. It's not rocket science. Everyone needs to stop being such a baby.
@@sananton2821 If you have a bad learning disability, have awful vision, or accidentally selected the wrong language and now all the language options are written with words you don't understand, "just learning it" won't work. Also, it takes an eternity to find the right language in a drop-down list if there's no icons to look for.
@@vickypedia1308 Still useless without TTS or other audio because if you can't read words that's the only hope for you.
@@sananton2821 and blind people should learn to see just one foot in front of their face and deaf people should learn to hear just one word and paralytics should learn how to walk just one mile. you need to stop being such a baby
I always thought it was just based on what the company/presenter thought would be the most recognizable. After all, the whole point of using flags is to make it fast and easy to select the right language.
It is. I feel like the video is overthinking a very logical use of visual cues.
@@brunadb23 It's the same thing with changing flags (or the use of words within a language) themselves. Those who find these as such huge issues have a whole lot of growing up to do.
"No two flags are exactly the same"
Tell that to Chad and Romania. If you consider English (US) and English (UK) to be the same, then the two flags listed are also the same
Chad's flag is slightly darker in shade than Romania's
As an Austrian, having German represented by the flag of Germany is always quite... annoying mostly because of how other people think about it. "Like yeah of course Germany would be representative of GERMAN, you sill goose!"... sounds funny and all, until you become aware that the word German (or Deutsch) is way older and described originally way more people than just the people and the land that is today's Germany (or Deutschland). Like German as in the way you probably think of when you read that, is comparatively young and it goes back to the point of still being an awful standin at times.
Hey, I think most people were keen to change the NZ flag, just not to the designs that ended up being put up as alternatives. I wanted the sweet Kiwi with laser beam eyes for our flag.
Like how most Aussies did want a republic back in '99, we just didn't want the model they offered. Think there have been similar discussions about our flag and also anthem too, nobody really likes the current ones, but all the alternatives that get put up are worse.
It was a glorious flag for a glorious nation. Too bad it wasn't picked
Red Peaks flag was such a good design and the voting method was stacked against it and the other outliers.
Nearly half the final flags is the same but just recolours.
@@R4V3-0N The red peaks was fine, but it wasn't a kiwi with frikken laser eyes
Well…. In terms of the American flag representing “English” I would argue that it represented American English
American English is very weird lol
@@joshuacarre06 It’s not weird to the people living in the U.S.! Different English-speaking countries have different vocabulary, spellings, etc. Get over it!
@@joshuacarre06 British English is weird
@@poppy63765 yes thats why i prefer traditional English
@@joshuacarre06 blæt þes?
I work in video game localization. We do not typically work in "English" or "Portuguese" or "Spanish" but rather "American English", "Brazilian Portuguese", and "Latin American Spanish". Most of the flags are to indicate the region that the game has been localized for more than the language that they speak there. But it does get very messy with Spanish especially because it varies so much from region to region even within Latin America.
back in the day in the 20th century Mexico developed a "neutral" spanish, we were dubbing and translating all content from the rest of the world into spanish for latin america, however eventually the other countries developed their own dubbing and film industries, but for a time all of the shows that would be dubbed in latam were dubbed in Mexico city using "neutral" spanish, all of the classic anime from the 90s for example
I kinda like the idea of having a language with its variations as options for studying, but it might make it harder and possibly easier to learn at the same time
It will avoid confusion if someone learns one dialect free of other dialects mixed in
But will possibly have people torn on which dialect to learn, and how understandable the one they learnt will be to speakers of the others
I like flags being used to represent languages personally, as a British Web developer who's lived in France my whole life I have been on both sides of this issue.
I feel like a visual, non text-based representation is vital.
It does come with it's issues but one possible solution would be to randomize it. So have a website randomly select a valid flag.
That being said, that causes new issues with possibly rendering the icon not recognisable to some people.
Maybe it could be a browser setting? In the event that a server wants to render a flag just have the navigator recieve and then select the right flag for that user.
The randomize idea is completely ridiculous. Asides from the not recognizing it (e.g. some random old colony for English) as you bring up, imagine the inconsistency if you one day have to select flag A and the other day flag B to get the same language.
I totally agree, while I think that the solution of having ecah language written in sid language. A lot of the time it isn't viable as a design choice. You can't have a large drop down menu for everything, or in a game where there's dozens of languages going through a wall of text to find one is difficult and annoying.
As such I still believe that flags, as long as they are recognizable, have a place in such intances. Since making new symbols that everyone agrees to is rather implausible.
@@dominikrudolfettrich2556 I don't think large drop downs or extensive lists are a problem in this case, because be realistic, how many times is the user changing the language of something? Not many, most of the time you just pick the language at the start and never bother about it again.
I just simply had people vote for what flag to show
VPNs. Do I need to say more?
One game I played called Celeste used the Canadian flag to represent English (they also use the native language words for the other languages in the game alongside flags), and I thought it was pretty fitting since the developers are from Canada and speak English, and the game takes place on a fictional representation of a mountain of the same name (I'm pretty sure it's only the unofficial name for the mountain though) in Canada. You can even see a Canadian flag being flown in one of the levels.
Considering that Canada has both french and english as official languages, that seems a bit iffy.
@@mergele1000 That's not really my point though; it's more that they felt like doing it and it works for them with their identity as Canadians.
Amusing yes, but confusing, also yes
@@gotoastalwell it also has the word English next to it
I definitely remember seeing that as you don't run into Canadian flags often for that use. But as an American my reaction was "Oh cool, I guess the devs are from Canada".
This dawned on me a few months ago and I remember talking to someone about it. I had the same experience as you (minus Rayman) but had realised it was hard to pick a country when the language is in other places, and some places have lots of official languages.
Wondering what else we could use instead, I thought of a translator friend who speaks uses designations such as pt-BR (Brazilian Portuguese), es-ES (Spanish from Spain) etc -- and those seem more helpful but as you said, they're not eye-catching.
The main argument for flags for languages is if you have accidentally changed the language to an unreadable one for yourself. I have absolutely no idea what the Chinese symbol(s) are for English, but I can pick out a flag.
Just always write the language name in that language regardless of what language settings. So English will always be "English" instead of "英语“ some other language.
But why not have “中文” and “English”, then?
that is what I mean, write the name of the language in that language regardless of language settings. So English is always English, Spanish is always Español, and Russian is always русский regardless of what language everything else is in.
There's also the issue of one language being used to represent an entire nation. Philippines has ~200 languages, Tagalog and Cebuano/Bisaya being the most common, but Tagalog is often named "Filipino" and the Philippine flag is used. Maybe because Tagalog is the dominant language of the capital or something. This was a minor controversy back then. Also, how to create flags for ~200 languages?
200 languages? How in the f-
@@bruhmoment3478 actually I think it's lower than that, but some languages certainly got extinct. Btw Papua New Guinea has more
@@XiELEd4377 Interesting. Asia is truly something else.
Flag (Or country name) + language name in original language is a good option when you have more space. That makes it quick to find the relevant sublist you want since the main list is sorted by region
You search got ethnic flags
This is a prime example of a non-problem. Everybody get‘s it typically.
Also: usually you choose the flags of your anticipated customers.
Finally: what are the alternatives? When you prefer to not use any script?
I'm in a class that talked a lot about web accessibility, and for the sake of users who are dyslexic, or struggle with visual processing, it would be nice to have symbols for languages. But you'd still run into the issue of dialects and different versions. So I'll probably stick with flags, but make sure it's the flag that matches the specifics. Like the language spoken in the French parts of Canada is far enough away from French that I've seen a lot of sites use the Quebec flag for it, which yes is a province, but is very recognizable. By extension, the fleur de lis could be used for French as many places that claim French heritage do use it, but there aren't equally well known symbols for other languages.
3:00 WTF is this? Spain map is not that one LOL
Flags, for me, have to be used for the country that made the translation or was based.
If the French translation was made by Canada, it have to be the Canada flag, or if the Portuguese version was based of the Angola's Portuguese, etc.
That will be more easy for the people that want to learn, to the people that already know about the language and don't be confused.
If you used the Canadian flag to represent Canadian French, how would you know it wasn't Canadian English?
I'm better at recognizing flags than the native spelling of language names so I'm okay with using flags.
But who do you think the native spelling is for?
@@Liggliluff Yeah. If you don't know "Suomi" is Finnish, you're probably not choosing Finnish.
@@erink476 Also, you could also include the ISO codes or do it like Windows in its language settings: both the native and the translated name + regional version are being shown - without any flags.
Deutsch (Schweiz)
German (Switzerland)
I get what you're saying and yes, you've got a point (actually several). However, the amount of effort and cooperation it would take to make everyone agree on this matter would be huge, and I personally don't care enough to do something about it. I'm Chilean and I couldn't care less about my language being represented by the Spanish or Mexican flag, even if both countries are thousands of kilometers away from mine and speak different varieties, because at the end of the day it doesn't affect my daily life.
Anyways, you earned a new sub :D
Why not just use the Chilean word for Chilean, and the same for other languages
Thank you for touching this issue, i thought i was alone for many years. As a portuguese kid it would always confuse me to choose portuguese options but then having a lot of words i didn’t understand and neither my family, and later discover it was not european portuguese. It also upset me to see websites having “portuguese” with the brazilian flag, and then “spanish” with the Spanish flag. If they are going for number of speakers, it is finec but then why did they pick spain flag and not mexico?
I think as a portuguese, judging from the people around me, many portuguese prefer to play videogames in english than in brazil portuguese, probably because of lack of exposition to our own version of the language we just got used to english
For Portuguese, I think it's right when there's two versions apart, one for Brazilian and another for Portugal. I can't tell however how much this would be an issue for Portuguese speakers of other countries. To my untrained ears, their spoken version strongly resemble the speakers of Portugal.
There are many easily distinguishable accents in Brazilian regions, however to me these differences hardly affect the understanding, if at all. The same however isn't true as to Portugal... I find it hard to understand everything they say, some Brazilians find it even harder, to the point of hardly understanding sometimes.
The written language is far more cohese thought, we share mostly everything the same. However some personal pronouns differ, as well as a bunch in vocabulary, to the point that I'd rather play a game in English, as I speak it fluently. In rare occasions, I just can't understand some words they use in Portugal.
At my work, we took flags out of a menu of languages. We list languages in their native names.
That's how it should be. Do like Wikipedia.
I’ve never thought twice about this! I’m in the U.S. and I’ve seen the American flag and the Union Jack represent English in various places. I’m just trying to find the English language option. I don’t care what flag they use! Edit - This sounds like some modern day SJW contrived outrage. Many languages are spoken in more than one place, and they obviously can only use one flag for a small icon.
100% agree
Did you really have to bring politics into this? This has nothing to do with SJWs or any ideology. All sorts of people with different beliefs and backgrounds have their own opinions on this.
@@bestrafung2754 I have my own opinion on this as well and I’m stating it just like you or anyone else. 🤷🏾♀️
I do hate those terminology debates but I don't really know if they're a modern sjw concept, people always debated over terminology
@@Maki-00 yea but your opinion is an insult for people you disagree with, which is not a constructive opinion.
I have been fighting against flags to represent languages for many years, for all the reasons you cite and more. I absolutely agree that the right way to represent languages is either the name in the current UI language, the endonym, or possibly both (as in the iOS language settings page). In cases where you absolutely need a compact, fixed length representation for a language, the best extant option I am aware of is ISO language codes, which are 2 or 3 letter codes for each language, e.g EN for English, ES for Spanish, and HI for Hindi. It’s definitely and imperfect solution, as not everyone knows this standard, but you do see it used in places like instruction manuals and clothing tags.
Dude the flag makes lots of sense u just need to have basic knowledge about how languages work and how they vary in different countries like (🇨🇵 French) (🇨🇦 French) or (🇦🇫 persian) (🇹🇯 persian) (🇮🇷 pesian) it is not based on the number of speakers or most popular it is based on which dialect they are using
@@comionpewrio, flags do not make a good symbol for languages. In a some cases, the is an almost perfect overlap between a country and a language, where nearly all people who speak that language live in that country, and nearly all people in the country speak that language, such as Japan/Japanese, or Iceland/Icelandic. But it is much more common that languages are spoken as the primary or major secondary language in MANY countries (particularly former colonial power languages like Spanish, French, English, and Portuguese), and it is quite common for countries to have many co-dominant languages (notably countries like India, Switzerland, Canada, and Belgium). And there are many languages with very large native speaker populations that lack a formal national flag, such as Kurdish. And finally, flags are symbols that strongly evoke nationalism, and many people who suffered under colonialism for decades may not wish to see the language they speak represented by a former colonial power.
@@comionpewrio if you see a Canadian flag, does that mean English or French? If you mean Canadian French, why not just say “Canadian French” or “fr-CN”? Why use a mix of text and a flag symbol?
I've been using flags to represent release countries for various manuals.
The trickiest one was the Canadian manual which was issued separately in both English and French, so I created sub-icons (a George Cross flag and a French Tricolour) to sit over the lower-right corner of the Canadian flag.
Hopefully that was a happy compromise.
As an ex-exploratory colony, we love to see Brazil being used to represent "Portuguese" 🤣🤣 Because having the flag there usually would represent which country would have the biggest cultural influence and world recognition for speaking that language...
We don't care much if it is the Portuguese flag to represent the language (even thoughwe love seinf the Brazilian flag), but we do know that when it has the Portuguese flag, we expect a Portugal Portuguese...
People use flags because it usually represents a country and culture, but countries are not necessarily all homogeneous... In which the most influential language or whatever was imposed, would be chosen as the language that the flag represents...
In conclusion, I really don't care much about that matter, but I can understand the confusion and conflicts it may cause...
The problem for me, as a Portuguese person, is that our version of the language are differently enough that can cause confusion. As you said, seeing the Brazilian flag, one will assume it's the PT-BR version and seeing the Portuguese flag we assume it's PT-PT, that's not the problem. You may not notice this as a Brazilian, but for portuguese people we often find sites(mostly in languages learning sites) that say they have Portuguese as an option and when you try to type in PT-PT and it's says it's wrong bc they are written in PT-BR and don't accept the Portuguese version. And that also affects people from Portuguese speaking African countries that write in a more closer way to PT-PT than to PT-BR. And you know that are a lot of words that have completely different meanings depending from each side of the Atlantic you are. I once said " oh rapariga anda cá" to a Brazilian girl that had just recently arrived here and I she got so mad I though she was going to beat my ass. 😂😂😂 Another Brazilian that has been here for longer explained to her that I didn't mean anything bad by that but it took some time to convince her.
@@LadyNikitaShark entendo perfeitamente, já encontrei sites que só aceitavam a estrutura portuguesa, mas eu não tinha contato com o sotaque então me fodia, mas acho que escolhem o sotaque brasileiro por ser muito mais utilizado do que o europeu
Valid arguments here, we can get rid of flags. However, there is also the argument of keeping them in translation as an indication of what dialect of the language you will receive. The idea of "French," "Spanish," or "English" is not exactly the same either, including orthography and grammatical structure. In those instances, it does provide context as to what you will see. Additionally, going automatically to the "origin" of a language for many speakers maintains an imperialist/colonialist connotation, wherein any other country is deemed "not acceptable" outside of one location. I think to save feelings all across, to indicate dialect it's fine, but for all other contexts it just doesn't seem worth it. Far too many people care too much about this from a nationalist perspective, it's a bit ridiculous
There's another idea of using new flags for languages, unrelated or inspired by countries. There is the factor of recognisability, but if everyone is using it, people will get used to it. For example, ⚜ is associated with France and appears on Quebec's flag. For example, take the Fleur-de-lys flag but make the symbols white. This should come across as French without being France or Quebec. You could say it's heavily inspired by Quebec, but I'd say Quebec is heavily inspired by French symbols, which makes sense.
My father used to teach French (in high school) and he had a textbook with the flags of the four most important French speaking nations on the cover, France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada.
I believe J. J. McCullough mentioned this too
Countries with multiple languages where other languages are repressed. I have always been against representation of language with flags as one language, one country is a European concept where for Yugoslavia, coming together did not mean coming together despite differences but also an attempt at homogenisation.
Reminds me of the "what counts as anime" debate.
"Avatar is obviously drawn with anime style in mind but it's not made in Japan"
"But Panty and Stocking looks nothing like anime but is made in Japan"
As a Swedish speaking Finn, I relate to this video a lot. Seeing the Swedish flag to represent the language is just wrong if the context is within Finland.
Sometimes though, some international sites actually give the options of Swedish with a Finnish flag for Swedish speaking users in Finland, and Swedish with a Swedish flag for users in Sweden.
Taiwan uses traditional Chinese charatcers whereas mainland China uses simplified Chinese characters. They need to be different language options because of this. Traditional Chinese is also used by overseas Chinese communities such as in Singapore and Malysia.
Then there's Japan that borrows/uses the same writing characters (Kanji/Katakana) from/as China (especially with Kanji)...I guess the Kanji for Nihongo is distinctive enough so it doesn't cause issues with how the names of Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese are written when used in this context.
I think SEA Chinese communities tend to use Simplified Chinese instead; I barely saw any Traditional Chinese character when I was in Malaysia and Singapore. Traditional Chinese is more common in Taiwan, Hong Kong and some Chinese communities in the US.
@@PinkAgaricus Katakana don't exist in Chinese though. I'm not sure what you mean but in Chinese (both simplified and traditional) you would write 中文 for "Chinese", while you would write 中国語 in Japanese for "Chinese". Similarly 日本語 for "Japanese" in Japanese, while 日语 in simplified Chinese and 日語 in traditional Chinese.
Traditional Chinese is only used in HK/Macau and Taiwan. Overseas Chinese is taught as simplified unless it’s the aforementioned communities.
What you mentioned is why you get the options on keyboard typing etc. If anything this is just a complex version of American and English spelling whilst all other aspects of the language are identical.
What a coincidence! I was just on a diary app where you can record activities you did throughout the day, and you can create your own activities with their own icons. I wanted to add the languages I liked to practice, but they didn't have any flags. I gave Spanish a sombrero, Italian the tower of Pisa, Japanese a torii gate (this: ⛩️), and Dutch a bicycle. Perhaps a bit stereotypical, but I had to work with what icons there were.
but it has the same issue as flags. like ... should English be represented with Statue of Liberty the Big Ben?
tho imo it would be helpful for regional languages or varieties, e.g. merlion for Singapore Hokkien, boba tea for Taiwanese, Tulou for Hakka.
@@hirokokueh3541 Fair enough. I wasn't saying this was better; I was just saying what I was up to the day this video came out.
Although, I feel like American English should be represented with an American football 🏈 or a cowboy hat 🤠 and British English should get a cup of tea or a double decker bus.
This is weird for Spanish too because the sombrero is common in Mexican culture but not so much in other places
What would you give the Danes if you had started learning it? Both the Dutch and the Danes love bikes (though the Netherlands win).
@@RockiesSweden Mexican Spanish is notably different from for instance Spanish Spanish, so if one is learning the kind of Spanish spoken in Mexico then using a Mexican cultural staple makes complete sense, but not if you are learning the type of Spanish spoken in Spain.
4:00 Reason three would be that there is a difference between languages, for example most might have an American flag to represent 'English' because it is American English not British English, I would be pretty certain the same could go for many other languages because not all similar languages are the same. 0:49 Not to mention many would like to use their own countries flag because they find that sense of pride in it.
As a latin american, what I've experienced in langaguage options and flags, is that they represent more the kind of accent the game is dubbed/subbed. If you are a native spanish speaker from anywere but Spain, you can notice even in non-spoken text if the text is weitten in Spain Spanish, I would assume the same applies to American English and British English. So, even if you get the american flag to represent the language of the game as "english", you can be mostly rigth to assume the audio and text will be heard and read as American English ant not British English. I've played PAL version of games with english with a britsh flag and inmediatly thought "this will be harder for me (non-native) to hear LOL". I remember also seeing the mexican flag in some games which were dubbed in Mexico, so one would expect it to sound like Latin American Spanish and not from Spain.
Yes!! This has always bugged me as well. I mean, I get it's a easy go to way to ID a language, and for certain languages it may even be appropriate - like with Japanese. But with other languages, like Chinese, it can be quite troublesome!
One of the reasons Spain flag works very well is the fact that most South and Central American see there origin as Spain. While if you use the Mexican flag a lot of other Spanish speaking country would feel insulated.
No one would be offended, trust me I'm Colombian and have seen my share of Mexican flags representing the Spanish language on a number of websites and other places. What I've noticed sometimes is the use of the national flag if the site is made by a company originally from there or based there, so Colombian companies that function internationally would say:
🇨🇴Español
🇺🇲English (although this one also has 🇬🇧 or 🏴 even by Colombian companies, but aren't as popular)
🇫🇷French
Etc.
I've also seen like the current company I work for:
🇺🇲English
🇨🇦English
🇨🇦French
I haven't made an error, they have two English links and one French which both use the Canadian flag because it's meant for its Canadian branch.
As an Argentinian, I also don't feel offended if the Mexican flag is used to represent Spanish, though i prefer Spain's flag to be used. However, sometimes Spanish is separated into Castilian Spanish (also controversial) and Latinamerican Spanish and there is the Mexican flag used and I have no problem with that neither.
@@fabriziomariano1332
Even though "Spanish" is more widely used, and according to Royal Academy you can call the language "Spanish" too however it still reefers to Castilian. And its safe to say Castilian. Because logically speaking
There is no such thing as
Castilian Spanish
Or
Latin American Spanish
The language itself originated from Castile and not from whole Spain.
Thus it is ONLY Castilian.
Because there are 5 languages in Spain respectively and all of them are spoken in their own regions respectively.
Such as Catalan, Euskera, Galician etc etc. So if you call Castilian as only Spanish then that would be very offending to those people of Spain who speaks different languages.
Because those languages are from Spain as well thus all of them are equally Spanish.
@@KarmaKraftttt it's interesting to say that in America (the continent), there is no general consensus on how to call the language as some countries prefer to call it "Español" while others prefer "Castellano". And while you are right on differentiating Castillan from catalan and Basque, take in mind that most of the conquerors sailed from Cádiz and thus, castillian in America took a lot of cadiz and sevillian features (like s,z and c making the same s sound).
So I may agree with you that calling it Castillian is at least more precise than Spanish. Though, grammatically speaking, I think there are enough differences to treat Latinamerican Spanish and European Spanish as the two main variations of the same language, instead of having the European as the standard one.
@@fabriziomariano1332
I lived in Sevilla and other parts of Andalucía. And in here southern Spain ts very common to hear "s" sound for "C" and "Z". Hahaha Not everyone use "th" sound for "C" and "Z" haha. Accents are a very common thing in every language. Also there are little grammatical difference in American English as well but it's still "English" though. Same goes for Castilian. ☺️
06:55 The Democratic Republic of the Congo speaks Belgian-French, not French-French so it's a different dialect of French.
10:09 "Uses the flags of the USA and Brazil for Portuguese and English, respectively"
3:01 is nightmare fuel.
Not only has Spain invaded portugal, they probably also forced like 5 diferent reagions in their own country to speak spanish.
Nem tinha reparado! Que raio de ilustração é essa?
Yeah like 500 years ago
Flags or at least some sort of picture representation is useful when the select language screen also changes the characters used. I've accidentally changed a device to some Asian language before and it was the flag that got me through.
The choice of British and US flags also let's me know what spelling to me except. If I can choose UK spelling I will every time. If only just so I stop failing spell checks unnecessarily.
That's why most come with a generic icon to clearly denote the language picker and it's usually placed in a highly visible spot.
There is a good way to use flags at representing languages; submenus, you choose you country's flag and a sub menu opens asking you for a specific language in case you were able to adapt your product to more than one language, and if there are multiple countries speaking said language, like Spanish for example, the flags are still fine because this way you send two messages:
1. "We recognize there are multiple ways to speak the same language, so choose your own"
2. "We adapted our product to the language in the way this countries uses it".
Then you can write below the name of the language it's using the flag for and if we use the same flag fro multiple languages then we can simply add an alternating gif of all the languages used so when they open it they can choose their own, we don't have to stop using flags but instead improve the way we use them and make useful additions.
I knew exactly where you were going with that Rayman anecdote, that screen stuck with me as a kid too
The most frustrating thing is when a site or app offers an option for English (US) but then doesn't have a English (UK) option, so what's the point in distinguishing them!? XD
They are just saying which version they are willing to use. My question for you is, do you have trouble understanding it?🤨
@@mlx39996
Yep.
I think flags are fine.
Granted there are arguments for doing one thing or the other, but a lot of the time there’s a common sense solutions.
I think the original land is the best choice in general.
Common sense is that people who play a text based game can read their own language, therefore you use the languages own name for itself.
@@algotkristoffersson15 own name + Flag.
As a Brazilian I can't see it as a problem because it is actually rare to have only one Portuguese option, it's usually PT BR (Português Brasileiro) and just PT, in most cases we can understand each other in a conversation, but Portuguese midia is another language to me, it is hell to understand movies in Portugal PT, and like it or not we Brasilians are quite vocal about things we dont like so many services already knows whats good.
Funny enough I have sometimes seen English being represented with the really old version of the Union Jack, without the diagonal red cross, on multiple websites, on translated restsurant menus and more. Always makes me wonder of they just Googled Great Britain and took the old flag by mistake...
Most of the time on language selection screens in games the English option has a split flag of the States and the U.K.
Yeah, you over thought it. I like this method, actually. So, here's a counter argument:
Flags are faster to recognize. Look, you want to play that game, buy that book, or watch that film. Flags, especially the ones from the most recognized languages, are much faster to recognize than the actual words, and can easily be used as a supplementary means of identifying country. For example, I often look for my flag inside of "South Africa" when looking for a name, because there are so many places beginning with "South". Same with languages. I will often breeze through a language list, to quickly pick English. But, if there aren't flags, I sometimes struggle to identify the difference between "English" and "Español", especially if I'm trying to do something else, even something simple, like hold a cup of coffee, or tell someone how cool the film they're about to sit through is. I don't want to have to spend all of my concentration working out what language to select. And, I'm not even dyslexic. I cannot imagine how frustrating it must be to fight with languages, when the simple addition of a small flag is so easy and helpful.
This is so funny, I was literally thinking of this this morning, and I find this in my recommended
Using native names for languages on language learning apps is stupid. If a monolingual English speaker wants to learn Chinese but can’t read Chinese characters, how would they differentiate between Japanese written in Kanji (Chinese characters used to write Japanese in certain contexts) vs Chinese written in Chinese characters, or what about Urdu vs Farsi? Both names are written in the Persian script & someone who doesn’t know the language might not be able to differentiate between the two or even between them and Arabic
You kinda forgot another reason why flags are used for the language; standardised language teachings. For example, most people that use german across everywhere in the world, unless they were taught or learned in a distinct dialect, learned high German, which is the standardised language of Germany which is taught in schools all over the world, including Germany.
Often that is also the case with US, which is funnily enough what you started by. British English and American English does have differences. although almost completely intelligable to eachother.
Flags represent the standardised teaching in that language usually.
Using flags to represent language is an important accessibility feature for people trying to find their language on something written in a language they do not understand and even for people who just generally cannot read well. As for using the name of the language, using multiple languages on a single webpage or other computer program can get very technically challenging especially if some of the languages are read in different orders or use non-Latin scripts. My opinion is that the flag used should represent the country that the form of the language was written in, so a site written in American English should have a US flag, but if they use unnecessary u's it should have a UK flag.
oi dont come at our "u"s *grumbles about how we invented it*
When I was playing a game and it asked what language I prefer to play, I chose to play in Portuguese, my native language. The game just had the European variant (I'm Brazilian and I'm not very exposed to Portugal's Portuguese). Sometimes I don't understand some phrases, or some words like "ventoinha". Some words seems funny to me, and sometimes I ask myself "Portuguese people really talk like that in real life?" Haha, But it's a good experience to get out of my (Brazilian) bubble, and meet some new words and different word conjunctions
Out of curiosity, what's the Brazilian word for "ventoinha" (fan) then? I had no idea it was different.
@@yvltc in Brazil is "ventilador", but the game was talking about the propellers (hélice in br Portuguese) in the ventilation system
05:50 I've seen the English flag used to represent the English language quite a bit.
In theory, the flag of the Francophonie could be a nation-neutral way to represent French but even most French speakers won’t recognize that one. Typically, it’s just the French flag (especially on any international sites) but occasionally I have seen a split flag image (usually France/Quebec). You can even get Canada/Quebec (rarely) or just Quebec’s flag on North American specific websites like online stores that don’t ship outside North America. Basically, in North America most French speaking customers are Canadians (and mostly Québécois). Mexico’s flag is not a rare choice for Spanish on this side of the pond too, at least in the North American free trade bloc.
All that said, I agree that using national flags is a half-baked form of visual shorthand.
As an American, I've never really cared when English was represented by Union Jack. The language is called English, it came from England, so it makes sense to represent the language with the flag the English used. It never felt weird to me.
Because you have common sense
I'm Canadian and I agree🐧
A case where I think it makes sense is when there's a distinction between countries' versions of a language. For example, some games and websites differentiate US English from UK English, having minor differences in spelling and vernacular to better reflect that country's version of English and association each variation with that country's flag.
I think that there's a third factor: flag recognition, that makes sense for french and arabic
Using only text to represent a language seems awkward, both aesthetically and for clarity. Especially in the rare contexts where the target audience may bee too young to read, an image - and especially, a flag - might be more on point.
If a language is already named after a country, I feel like you might as well use that country's flag. That applies for French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and for English you'll have to decide whether to use the country containing England or the subcountry of England itself.
For regional languages like Hindi and Arabic it can be harder, but you might find flag elements that countries or provinces in that region tend to have in common. In the case of Arabic, that seems to be the red, white, and black stripe as seen in the flags of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Sudan, and reminded of in neighbouring countries.
I've seen Quebec have their flag used and they're a province, so I thought of the same thing. That being said, it is more of a variation of a language that people from France wouldn't understand very well, so the France flag is for more formal French, and the Quebec flag is for the Canadian dialect? I'm not sure what you'd classify it as. I also don't see a problem in using multiple flags. It may mess with how menu items are lined up, but it could help.
6:43 His takes on French is just dumb as he clearly didn't done any research on the subject for this language. French is a language directly administrated by France that determines what words get added or deleted from the language with the "Immortals" in the institution of the Académie Française, and then you have the Organisation of the Francophonie that makes sure every countries with French speaker learns and speak the French of France. So "OUI" the French language is accurately represented by the French Flag as it have the authority of the language in it's hands.
for the arabic language i’ve seen the flag of the arab league on it or sometimes palestine 🇵🇸 because it has the pan arab colors, but more often the arab leagues flag is used
I'm Israeli I wish you the best
Israel is a nice country but with horrible dumb people
I totally respect you as a person and wish the best for you as well, but I'm not so down with Nationalism or Settler-colonial states. I don't think you mean harm, but asserting Israel every time Palestine comes up is problematic.
@@adamkh0r
الله ينصر فلسطين المحتلة، تحياتي من العراق
the use of flags to represent languages is actually brilliant. as some have pointed out many languages differ depending on your region which you as an englishman are lucky to not have to deal with as harshly as some Spanish or Portuguese varieties for example. the flags if used correctly will tell you what version of the language you should expect which is fantastic.
Not every nation has just one language.
@@artugert that's the point
@@stupidw33b52 ？？？
So, if I show you a flag of India, which language does it represent?
@@artugert it represents India. which is why i said creating a flag specifically for languages like Hindi, Urdu or Bengali would be a good visual indicator in things like video games