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> Also, it's a bad practice to associate flags with languages There's even a website for this issue http://www.flagsarenotlanguages.com/blog/why-flags-do-not-

> Also, it's a bad practice to associate flags with languages There's even a website for this issue http://www.flagsarenotlanguages.com/blog/why-flags-do-not-represent-language/ http://www.flagsarenotlanguages.com/blog/why-flags-do-not-re...

laputan_machine 5y ago
Disagree, examples in the blog are poo. English comes from... England... why shouldn't be represented with an English flag? Spainish comes from... Spain... why shouldn't be represented with a Spanish flag? There are Spanish speakers in literally every country in the world, what is the solution? The Hindi argument is not good, Hindi is the _official_ language of India. I work with people from various parts of India and they can all communicate with each other because thry all speak Hindu/English (usually a mixture in conversation), even if their main language is Malayalam. There are issues with flags = languages (e.g. "Welsh": "Gaelic" for instance, or Switzerland (which one?), but for English/Spanish examples, they are not good ones to use And to end this, just because there is a website for your issues doesn't mean it's correct. There is nothing preventing someone from making a website called flagsarelanguages.com and having poo counter points to the original websites poo arguments. Appeal to authority nonsense.
- polar 5y ago
  > Hindu is the _official_ language of India Hindi, not Hindu. Also, Hindi is not the only official language of India.
  - laputan_machine 5y ago
    Thanks! It was a typo, I've corrected it
zild3d 5y ago
Don't think the site is going against these. It says "Choose Location and Language" and offers for example: - :us-flag: United States [USD] - :ca-flag: Canada (English) [CAD]
- kstenerud 5y ago
  What it should offer is two separate options: One for the store location, one for the language. This becomes especially important in Europe because you have so many people who live in a country where they don't speak the associated language natively. This is such a basic UX rule that I'm a bit surprised to see them fumble on it...
- kilburn 5y ago
  The issue there is that "being in country X" and "wanting to see the site in language Y" is going to be against some users' preferences. Examples: - Canadians from Quebec may prefer the site in french (but use CAD as a currency and see Canada's taxes where relevant). - Expats in Thailand very much prefer to use the site in English. - I'm in Spain and my browser is setup to reflect my preferences (Catalan first, English if that's not available, Spanish last). I prefer English to Spanish because international companies either have a strong presence here (and will probably have Catalan as an option) or their Spanish translation will be worse than the original language in English which I understand better than low effort translations. Frame.work is going for a locale selector but they don't even support all the official locales of the regions they already operate in (e.g.: they don't support fr_CA). Even if they did, there are always users that would prefer a "non-official" localization (en_TH, en_ES following my examples above). In the end they would be much better off letting users pick the language, region and currency separately. It's less effort from their part and a better solution for the users. In that case, flags for languages are bad and flags for regions are fine but can still rub against some users' feelings. Example: pro-independence Scots having to pick the UK flag. Is it really that terrible to have auto-complete and/or select fields for these 3 things?

laputan_machine 5y ago

Disagree, examples in the blog are poo. English comes from... England... why shouldn't be represented with an English flag? Spainish comes from... Spain... why shouldn't be represented with a Spanish flag? There are Spanish speakers in literally every country in the world, what is the solution? The Hindi argument is not good, Hindi is the _official_ language of India. I work with people from various parts of India and they can all communicate with each other because thry all speak Hindu/English (usually a mixture in conversation), even if their main language is Malayalam. There are issues with flags = languages (e.g. "Welsh": "Gaelic" for instance, or Switzerland (which one?), but for English/Spanish examples, they are not good ones to use And to end this, just because there is a website for your issues doesn't mean it's correct. There is nothing preventing someone from making a website called flagsarelanguages.com and having poo counter points to the original websites poo arguments. Appeal to authority nonsense.

polar 5y ago
> Hindu is the _official_ language of India Hindi, not Hindu. Also, Hindi is not the only official language of India.
- laputan_machine 5y ago
  Thanks! It was a typo, I've corrected it

zild3d 5y ago

Don't think the site is going against these. It says "Choose Location and Language" and offers for example: - :us-flag: United States [USD] - :ca-flag: Canada (English) [CAD]

kstenerud 5y ago
What it should offer is two separate options: One for the store location, one for the language. This becomes especially important in Europe because you have so many people who live in a country where they don't speak the associated language natively. This is such a basic UX rule that I'm a bit surprised to see them fumble on it...
kilburn 5y ago
The issue there is that "being in country X" and "wanting to see the site in language Y" is going to be against some users' preferences. Examples: - Canadians from Quebec may prefer the site in french (but use CAD as a currency and see Canada's taxes where relevant). - Expats in Thailand very much prefer to use the site in English. - I'm in Spain and my browser is setup to reflect my preferences (Catalan first, English if that's not available, Spanish last). I prefer English to Spanish because international companies either have a strong presence here (and will probably have Catalan as an option) or their Spanish translation will be worse than the original language in English which I understand better than low effort translations. Frame.work is going for a locale selector but they don't even support all the official locales of the regions they already operate in (e.g.: they don't support fr_CA). Even if they did, there are always users that would prefer a "non-official" localization (en_TH, en_ES following my examples above). In the end they would be much better off letting users pick the language, region and currency separately. It's less effort from their part and a better solution for the users. In that case, flags for languages are bad and flags for regions are fine but can still rub against some users' feelings. Example: pro-independence Scots having to pick the UK flag. Is it really that terrible to have auto-complete and/or select fields for these 3 things?