undefined | Better HN

0 pointsAlex-Programs1y ago0 comments

There are very few countries with multiple equally-influential languages that don't have better alternatives for flags.

It's a pain to phrase, but: There is no reason to use the Swiss flag to indicate a language. French has the French flag. German has the German flag. Etc. There are dialects, as a nuance to this, but you can solve that by e.g. using a 50/50 merge of the German and Swiss flags.

Countries may have ambiguous languages, but _languages very rarely have ambiguous countries_. Sure, there are Finnish speakers in Sweden, but the Swedish flag remains a clear indicator of the Swedish language.

Hindi and India is the main exception to this. Arabic is also difficult, though Egypt seems to have a slight edge by convention.

> UX/UI designers have rightfully been banging the "don't use country flags to indicate languages" drum for literally decades

I sympathise, and if they have any better ideas than a textual list that users need to read through rather than quickly scan (not very good UX...), I'd love to hear them. From a _UX perspective_, is there something better than the flag cloud at https://nuenki.app for quickly asking "is my target language supported"?

0 comments

Kwpolska1y ago

> It's a pain to phrase, but: There is no reason to use the Swiss flag to indicate a language. French has the French flag. German has the German flag. Etc. There are dialects, as a nuance to this, but you can solve that by e.g. using a 50/50 merge of the German and Swiss flags.

Okay, which flag do you use to indicate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romansh_language — one of the four official languages of Switzerland?

ahakki1y ago

Maybe this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chur

AnimalMuppet1y ago

Given that it's the fourth-most-common language in Switzerland, the Swiss flag might not be a good choice.

andreareina1y ago

What flag would you use for Malay on a Singaporean site[1]?

> From a _UX perspective_, is there something better than the flag cloud at https://nuenki.app for quickly asking "is my target language supported"?

That flag cloud is actually hard for me to parse because where am I supposed to look for italian? I did find it, but I literally had to do a sequential scan because there's no apparent order to them. I would use a combo box searchable by: ISO language code, language name in english, language name in native language and script. It's clear what it's asking for, pretty much everyone is going to know at least one of the things it's asking for, it's not completely ascii centric. Flags can be added for some visual flair, and if you actually distinguish between (i.e. have different versions for) en-US and en-GB and en-SG, more power to you.

Tangential nit: nuenki.app shows the SPQR flag for (presumably) latin, but in the Language dropdown it's Latin (Classical) :classical_building::eagle:. Argh.

[1] https://book.health.gov.sg/

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse